Summer 2020 Edition | The York Historian

2020 Summer Edition

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Editorial Board

Editorial Board 2019 - 2020 Co Editors-in-Chief Holly Palmer Sophie Ferguson Medieval Editor Ellie Fisher

Early Modern Editor Oscar Patton Modern Editor Sophie Turbutt

Contributors List

Fin Bosworth, Harry Clay, Tom Davies, Ellie Dudgeon, Annie Finegan, Liam Greenacre, Joel Hoskins, Mary Taylor Lewis, Holly Palmer, Vera Ratnikova, Jess Reeve, David Rowley, Charlotte Small, Sophie Turbutt, Lucy Wilde, Stephanie Wilson, Morrison Wilson

How to get involved

We’d love for you to write for us, we always welcome content for our Medieval, Early Modern or Modern sections or you can even write us a review!

If you have an idea for an article you should email us (yorkhistorian@ yusu.org) outlining your idea. You should have a scroll through our website to see what has already been covered and to discover what our articles are like. We encourage articles that span across periods and topics or which seem unconventional!

No experience is required, just send us an email or a Facebook message with your idea and we’ll help you!

TheYorkHistorian

theyorkhistorian.com

yorkhistorian@yusu.org

Editor’s Note

The York Historian Print Edition Summer 2020 This year has been a very busy but very fulfilling year for The York Historian. As Editors we were keen to secure consistent funding for the magazine, and made the leap from being a departmental paper to become a YUSU Media Society. The main reason we did this was to encourage more students across the university to be involved in the society, not just as writers but as a group of peers.

We are hopeful for the future of The York Historian, that it continues to grow and offer a platform for more and more students to write about their interests in a non-acadmic format. As unfortunately in higher education, a love for writing about history is often shaped into a mould of academic essays and scholarly formats.

Our main goal for this year was to bring TYH back into print after a significant hiatus, unfortunately due to the pandemic and movement of teaching online we could not print and distribute this annual edition across campus. However we are proud of our achievement to have collated this (rather large) edition and to publish it online. We readily await the time we can finally move into print and are hopeful for the future of TYH! Holly Palmer and Sophie Ferguson Editors-in-Chief

Some pieces have been shortened to fit in the print edition, full versions of all articles and their bibliographies can be found online at theyorkhistorian.com

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Contents

Contents 6 2020 in History Feature | Various Authors Let’s take a look at some historical anniversaries in 2020 8 300 Years of Conquest: Romans and Political History in York

Medieval | Fin Bosworth

Fin Bosworth looks at the political history of York 11 Popular Unrest

Medieval | Ellie Dudgeon

In this short piece, Ellie Dudgeon discusses the 14th Century Peasants revolt 12 Holy Men as a Window into Late Antique Religion

Medieval | Holly Palmer

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In an analysis of the Holy Man, Holly Palmer looks at their use as a tool to understand late antique religion

“Where Guilt Hath No Redemption”: Depictions of Corso Donati in Contemporary Literature Medieval | David Rowley

David Rowley explores the representation of Corso Donati in italian literature

Siward: England’s First Regional Strongman Medieval | Harry Clay

A deep-dive into the fundamentals of history and its origins in story-telling through an examination of the multifaceted role of narration in history

historical memory

overlooked story of the Black Tudors

Charles’ legacy

Harry Clay takes a look at Siward to illustrate the use of varying sources in historiographical study

24 Histories and Stories: Narration in Historiography Feature | Vera Ratnikova

28 Cable Girls: A Turning Point in Spain’s National

Historical Memory?

Feature | Sophie Turbutt Sophie Turbutt reviews Netflix’s Cable Girls and its implications on Spain’s

32 Blanke History: The Untold Story of the Black Tudors Early Modern | Charlotte Small Through an analysis of the musician John Blanke, Charlotte Small tells the often 35 The Undeserved Legacy of Charles XII: Historiographical

Failings in Military History Early Modern | David Rowley

David Rowley explores Great Man Theory in Military History and its impact on

Contents 38 On the Savages: The Concept of ‘Barbarian’ in Political Thought Early Modern | Fin Bosworth Fin Bosworth analyses the ideology behind the concept of the ‘barbarian’ through

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analysis of contemporary political theory

The Soldier’s Experience in The Face of Battle (1976) Feature | Tom Davies Tom Davies reviews the Face of Battle

42 Historical Accuracy in the BBC’s War of the Worlds

Feature | Morrison Wilson

Morrison Wilson reviews the BBC adaptation of the War of the Worlds 46 From Technonationalism to Superficial Environmentalism:

Japan’s Olympics as a Political Tool Modern | Stephanie Wilson

Stephanie Wilson analyses how Japan utilises the Olympic Games for political means

46 Churchill: Statues as Historical Artefacts Modern | Lucy Wilde In this short article, Lucy Wilde discusses the use of statues as historical artefacts

through the case of Churchill 50 Coffee and Blood: Dublin’s Most Infamous Coffeehouse Modern | Vera Ratnikova Through the case study of Lucas’ Coffee House, Vera Ratnikova explores coffehouse

culture and duelling

54 The Response of Feminist Discourse to the Contraceptive Pill

Modern | Annie Finegan The Pill is often regarded as an advancement for women’s rights, Annie Finegan

explores contemporary feminist discourse that countered this perception

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A Third “Red Scare”? Bernie Sanders and the 2020 US Election Modern | Stephanie Wilson

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An Introduction to the History of Emotions Feature | Liam Greenacre

Representation and Restriction in the House of Lords Feature | Mary Taylor Lewis

Fin Bosworth explores how new facial reconstructions offer us a new understanding of legendary historical figures, looking at Caesar and Augustus.

In an analysis of the 2020 Presidential Election, Stephanie Wilson examines the connection between the ‘red scare’ and the perception of Bernie Sanders

Liam Greenacre offers us a brief introduction to the history of emotions

In this short article, Mary Taylor Lewis takes a look at the issue of underrepresentation of women in the House of Lords.

66 Life After Death: The Beauty of Historical Facial Reconstruction

Feature | Fin Bosworth

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Features

2020 in History

Let’s take a look at some historical anniversaries in 2020, from literature to international legislation.

The Mayflower

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2020 marks the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s voyage from Plymouth to Massachusetts. Roughly 135 men, women and children made the voyage, some to escape religious persecution, others to seek a better life in the New World. They settled in what would become known as Plymouth Bay and were assisted in establishing a sustainable settlement by the native Wampanoag tribe. The festival that the settlers threw to thank the Wampanoag established the American holiday of Thanksgiving. The effect of the Mayflower’s voyage, however, was to encourage other settlers from Europe to make the journey, resulting in rapid colonial expansionism that ultimately led to the decimation of the Native American tribes in the region, through a combination of imported diseases and armed conflicts with the expansionist European settlers.

Jess Reeve

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Wordsworth

This year saw the celebration of 250 years since the birth of the Cumbrian poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850). In his youth, Wordsworth was a radical liberalist and vocal supporter of the French Revolutionists. He is also a fundamental figure in the history of poetry as a founder of English Romanticism. In later life, Wordsworth’s politics became increasingly conservative but his youthful energy survived in his poetry which has captivated readers for over two centuries. The first major theme in Wordsworth’s poetry is his passion for the human relationship with nature and the sublime. Eco critics have marked the poet’s 250th anniversary by praising Wordsworth as the “green poet,” thus scholars have given him a modern relevance in our Thunbergain age of climate strikes and geo-conferences. The second theme of Wordsworth’s poetry is his fierce advocacy for poetry to be written in the rhetoric and speech patterns of the common man. Fittingly, his anniversary has been marked by the general public reading their favourite Wordsworth poems and completing the circle Wordsworth began by advocating poetry as a medium for all. The readings have been published online on “Wordsworth 250” a website set up by Wordsworth’s descendants.

Mary Taylor Lewis

Features

Beijing Platform for Action

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Created in 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women and considered the most progressive plan for advancing women’s rights. The Platform for Action covers 12 areas of concern from the environment, poverty, human rights to armed conflict, and how each area interacts with gender. It layed out strategies to ensure continual advancement of women’s rights in every area to progress towards a future of gender equality. The platform remains a key instrument in international legislation as well as remaining a foundation for women’s rights standards and goals globally.

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Holly Palmer

Treaty of Versailles

It is over 100 years since the signing of the much-maligned Treaty of Versailles, which concluded WW1. But without intending it, negotiators ended up doing far more than that; they needed to re-establish the collapsed economic structures of the dead Habsburg, German, Russian and Ottoman Empires. They also redesigned the new diplomatic and political World-Order; many seeking to sweep away the dogmatic might-makes-right of the old order, and replace it with liberalism, democracy and reasoned negotiation.

But rising nationalism meant there were competing pragmatic concerns and ambitious nations seeking to become great powers. Few left satisfied.

The new League of Nations also proved inadequate as an international intermediary, and so humanity ended up on the road to the Second World War. Joel Hoskins

The Divine Comedy

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2020 marks 700 years since the completion of The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri, which remains a pivotal and extraordinary piece of literature to this day. The poem itself narrates the passage of Dante through the three realms of the dead guided through the Inferno and Purgatory by Virgil, and through Heaven by Beatrice. It explores the ideas and perceptions of the afterlife in the Christian belief and the complexity of Hell and the levels of severity of sin. Not only creating a narrative system that became a significant influence on literature and religion, but also acting as a commentary on notable figures of his contemporaries and from his history, crossing both figures he himself admired, and those he didn’t. The Divine Comedy remains a masterpiece of Italian literature and imagery to this day.

Holly Palmer

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300 Years of Conquest: Romans and Political History in York, the Capital of the North Fin Bosworth looks at the political history of York between the years of 50-350 AD

It is hard to feel the legacy of the past, and even harder to understand it. Many ancient places are lost to the throws of time, an eternal and inevitable struggle with the constant forces of destruction; however quickly or slowly they may come. By the end of the Roman period, York had seen itself grow from a tribal den to a military fortress with cobbled streets and stone abbeys, becoming the site of two emperor’s deaths, state funerals and springboards for invasions as the de–facto capital of

the north of Britain.

2000 years ago, two tribes occupied the territory that is now York, the Brigantes and Parisii. Nevertheless, in 43AD the Roman conquest of southern Britain began, mercilessly subjugating tribes in a distinctively Roman fashion of imperialism.i. It was not until 70AD that the Roman legions crossed north of the Humber and Ouse. In the conquest of the Brigantes, historian and imperial cynic Tacitus notes that they were said to be “under

a woman’s leadership”, almost defeating the Romans in a defiant last stand.

Though the date is contested, between 70AD and 107AD, the construction of a wooden fort began in York, the foundations of what would become known as Eboracum, given its name to mean “yew tree place”. The outline of these fortifications are still visible in York today, as it became the base for later expansion.

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Eboracum functioned as a military base for most of its existence, from which a town and city began to slowly flourish. Originally housing a garrison of 5,500 men, tribal uprisings during the first century of its existence facilitated a greater inflow of military men, with in turn allowed permanent civilian settlement due to the protection afforded to them. Since its conception, Eboracum was visited by two Roman Emperors: Hadrian in 122AD, and Septimius Severus in 208AD, both of whom sought to expand the fortification of the region and city itself. One of the largest threats to Britain at this time were the organised tribes of the Scottish Highlands, most notably the Picts.

It was during Septimius Severus’ visit that the Imperial court was relocated to York during a planned invasion beyond Hadrian’s Wall.

However, in 211AD, he passed away and was

cremated in the city.

Irish and Germanic sea raiders grew in presence at the turn of the third century. While they were not looking to conquer Britain , robbery and theft of the countryside of northern England began to

the garrison at Hadrian’s wall to bolster his own army in the fight against the successive emperor, Constantius Chlorus. Their final battle came in the spring of 297AD with Constantius’ invasion of Britain, but due to the lack of defences against

take its toil on the land.

According to historian Stephen Johnson, between 260 and 280AD, the number of recorded lootings in Britain increased by over 1000%. These foreign looters were taking advantage of the growing political turmoil of the Roman Empire, the so–called ‘Crisis of the Third Century’.

A pretender emperor, Allectus, appropriated

the Scottish tribes at Hadrian’s Wall, an invasion of the aforementioned Picts came swiftly. Campaigning in Britain for almost a decade, Constantius finally defeated the Picts in 305AD. In preparation for a retaliatory invasion of Scotland, Constantius (and his son Constantine) began the expansion of the fortifications of the city. In what has been

Image: Carole Raddato | Flickr

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described as a “marvel of the age”, the remaining legacy of the emperor(s) is that of the ‘Multangular Tower’ placed in York. Only one other in the world exists like it, emblematic of the architectural might that the Romans achieved in this period. Constantius is believed to have died of natural causes in 306AD, promoting his son Constantine to the Imperial throne.

His soldiers crowned him at the base of what is now York Minster, where a bronze statue exists in his honour as the first Christian Roman emperor.

An earlier emperor, Diocletian, had administratively split the empire, which officialised Eboracum as one of the new provincial capitals, suggesting its importance by the end of the third century. Yet throughout the fourth century, the decline of the empire took a heavy toll on the flourishing city. Litera-

cy, stonework, art and sophisticated crafts began to die out – while invasions by the aforementioned Picts and the growing ferocity of seaborn raids plagued

off for endless civil wars. In economic decline and finding itself increasingly unimportant, histories mention little about Eboracum beyond the mid

the province with consistent and unending domestic threats. This was made untenable by the relentless sabotage of political order by ambitious Roman governors, who would almost periodically declare themselves emperor from the safety of their increasingly desolate island.

300ADs. After 383AD, little evidence suggests that any Roman troops were based in northern England, unable to deal with the growing conquests of sea raiders or the raiding Picts, shifting their priorities to defend the more prosperous south.

York became less and less important as a base of military operations as threats came from elsewhere or troops were syphoned

In 407AD, Governor Constantine crowned himself Constantine III upon hearing of Germanic invasions of Gaul (modern day France) and the near collapse of the Roman govern-

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ment, abandoning the province of Britain and ordering all troops in the region to join his army. This abandonment of the province was famously followed by the Rescript of Honorius, whereby the then–Emperor Honorius told the people of Britain to fend for their own survival and protection, as the Roman state was unable to provide anything of significance. In the same year, Rome was sacked for one of the

last times in the Roman period (411 AD), effectively signalling the end of Roman power projection.

Constantine III, the last Roman leader of Britain, was beheaded upon capture and his head was displayed on the walls of Carthage (modern day Tunis, Tunisia).

At a time when the world is protesting en masse, it can be interesting to look back at other times of popular discontent leading to change such as the Peasants’ Revolt in the late fourteenth century. It’s fair to say that the reign of Richard II was not particularly successful, and when Richard was only 14, we can look at a particular snapshot of his

ineffectual and unpopular leadership that eventually led to his deposition in 1399 by Henry Bolingbroke, hence giving way to what became the violent and turbulent period in England of the Wars of the Roses.

Left in mostly rubble and ruin, with a population and influence a fraction of what it once was, Eboracum would begin its slow transi-

tion into the city of York we know it as today.

Nevertheless, the tales and histories of this legendary past are always visible – from the remnants of the Roman fort, to the base of York Minster, to the makeup of the city itself – that eternal legacy has a thousand pasts to tell, and will continue to be of great importance to the history of Roman Britain.

Fin Bosworth

Popular Unrest

The revolt was led by Wat Tyler and consisted of large bands of peasants expressing their discontent stem-

ming from decades of hardship following the Black Death of the 1340s as well as economic hardship that followed and the leadership associated with it such as the imposition of 1381 poll tax.

Maybe, there are some subtle parallels between 1381 and 2020.

Ellie Dudgeon

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Holy Men as a Window into Late Antique Religion In an analysis of the Holy Man, Holly Palmer looks at their use as a tool to understand late antique religion

The Late Antique period is characterised by the changes that took place within it. Though including continuous themes and ideas from past ages, at least in a religious view, late antiquity saw the formation and evolution of the three Abrahamic religions, specifically Christianity and Judaism before the year 700. Along with that comes the rise of monasticism, where the lives of monks, saints and stylites are held to great importance, their lives characterising what people valued and how understand-

ing of religion and values spread. Therefore, studying holy men in late antiquity allows us to study not only the evolution of religion itself but how people understood and digested religion within their communities, and the function which God and religion through the holy man played within society. The holy man encapsulates what religion, and what a relationship with God, was to a contemporary person which is a glimpse into the past which is highly valued by historians.

Image: Bernard Gagnon | Church of Saint Simeon Stylites

The key writer on this subject and area is Peter Brown, The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity (1971) moved the representation and study of holy men in the period from traditional views from Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire where holy men were perceived as a ‘swarm of fanatics, incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity’ . As stated

by Howe, the ‘accomplishment of The Rise and Function was to move to center stage the ‘holy man’ and to claim positive social functions for him’.

Following the ideas of Peter Brown, with the holy man being at the centre of late antique society and being the primary link between common men and religion. The support for

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holy men from contemporary society is vital to the understanding and study of late antique religion. The faith of an unattainable deity being entrusted to a human man just like the believer is a significant take on the contemporary understanding of humanity and religion.

It could be argued that the holy man made religion tangible, thus the study of the rise of the holy man and his function within society in expanding the understanding of religion in his followers is of great importance historically and should not be disregarded.

Many academics have characterised what it was to be a holy man in this period, one common factor which is linked to such a person is the authority that he held within his community. ‘The holy man was the supreme fixer’, reputations of holy men as ‘healer, intercessort, magician and resolver of disputes for an

entire region’ are well documented through letters and records.

Such reputations were a ‘form of power in late roman society’ . This power and reputation enforces the importance of the holy man in late antique society and how fundamental he was to communities.

Throughout his works

Brown focuses on how the usefulness of the holy man stemmed from his ability to resolve social issues.

This shows that Brown takes a largely functionalist viewpoint, which is the strongest argument to be made about the holy man. It is quite difficult to study

religion in this period without analysing the workings of a religious society. In most cases, this analysis will show that saints, monks, stylites or simply ‘holy men’ were foundational to how people not only understood but interacted with religion.

It is important to note that most religious relationships at this time were founded upon the common person relating and interacting with holy men in their community who then interacted with God, or God worked through rather than a direct relationship with God themselves.

Brown describes holy men as ‘icons’ who bring the holy into the world, ‘a hinge person mediating between God and man’. Therefore, if historians are to give less attention to the rise of the holy man we are to give less attention to religion in the late antique period as a whole. No other factor, such as religious scrolls or conversions of em-

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man’. Therefore, if historians are to give less attention to the rise of the holy man we are to give less attention to religion in the late antique period as a whole. No other factor, such as religious scrolls or conversions of emperors can give as rich of an understanding of religion of the masses in this period as the holy man can. Taking a bottom-up approach provides a more fruitful understanding than top-down because it gives a view of how religion functioned rather than what decrees were issued. To the average late Roman, ‘the divine would have been brought to earth not so much by relics, by bishops, or even by the emperor himself as by the holy man.’ Thus, the holy man must be analysed to gain an understanding of the common man’s religious experience.

There are many contemporary documents that record acts of holy

men, views of them and miracles that occurred.

Brown himself looks at multiple sources, one of which he analyses are the diaries and letters of Cyril of Schythopolis. Brown states that men wondering ‘can a man be saved’ often

found themselves joining monastic communities centred around the holy man in Syria and Palestine. Perhaps more commonly referred to sources are the letters of Simeon Stylite. In these letters, responsibilities of holy men are highlighted as well as proof of their position in society as

many powerful religious people wrote to them seeking advice.

Scholars seem to agree that the holy man was a major figure in the running of communities, ‘he was called upon to offer advice, to mediate, to arbitrate, or to provide protection’ this does not only apply to individuals in the community but also to religious councils and people in power. Simeon and other holy men sent letters by request to either approve or disapprove the council of Chalcedon, ‘For, on the receipt of the letters of your worthiness, I admired the zeal and piety of our sovereign, beloved of God, which he manifested and still manifests towards the holy fathers and their unshaken faith’. Letters such as these highlight the characteristics and morals that were considered important especially in religion at the time, even with religious changes taking place the idea of ‘unshaken faith’ is held at

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of Christian salvation.

the utmost importance.

Without close study of holy men, it is more likely that this would have only been inferred from general religious understandings rather than documents between religious authorities confirming such beliefs.

Another letter from the same period writes ‘To our Spiritual Brother in Christ; adorned with graces illustrious and divine; zealous for the orthodox faith of the fathers, which we have learned from prophets, apostles, and saints… from the mean and weak sinner, Simeon, who stands upon the pillar near the village Telnesi; great and exceeding peace in the Lord’ . Highlighting

that holy men taught the faith and religious morals to his local people, and was held in authority for his connection with the Lord through his monastic behaviours. These documents emphasise ‘the ‘spiritual family’ to which the holy man was not only an example but in which he was a member’. Here, Rapp describes the position of the holy man excellently. Thus, reinforcing the view that if historians wish to analyse religious understandings of the era, holy men are exemplary members of community spiritual families, teaching and sharing beliefs and expectations. It has even been argued that the holy man defined the collective presentation

Overall, holy men held a vital role in the functioning of community based on shared beliefs and religious values.

Religion in this period cannot be studied without close examination of the holy man, specifically following the work of Peter Brown. Late antique society had long been dominated by violence articulated as demonic, thus ‘the holy man was very necessary’ for the functioning and stability of that society. The holy man was not only contemporarily fundamental to the stability of society, the teaching and understanding of religion and a means by which to connect to God he is also central to the modern historian’s ability to study religion in the late antique period and provides a wonderfully useful basis to comprehend how religion in the era functioned on a mass level.

Holly Palmer

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“Where guilt hath no redemption”: Depictions of Corso Donati in literature

David Rowley explores the representation of Corso Donati in contemporary italian literature

The civil conflicts and insurgencies in Florence in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries are the subject both of two prominent Florentine chronicles, but also the primary inspiration for much of the material of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, having vastly shaped his life. This article takes the figure who probably comes off worst from this literature, the politician and warrior Corso Donati, known as “The Baron”, and considers how the lives and perspectives of these writers have shaped their considerably extreme depictions of this pivotal man.

Background Born in around 1260 to the noble Florentine Donati family, Corso fought in three Flor-

entine civil conflicts, and his fame is due to his role at the heart of the events of the later two conflicts. The first was a broader Italian war which pitted “Ghibelline” Italians from a range of cities against the “Guelfs. Ghibellines are best understood as the anti-papal faction.

Whereas the Guelfs are best understood as anti-Imperial, as they rejected the Holy Roman Emperor’s attempts to assert imperial authority in Italy. However, in practice existing family feuds or marriage ties were expressed using these factions. Corso played a pivotal role in the 1289 battle of Campaldino by most accounts, leading a cavalry charge that decided the battle.

This led onto another series of violent con-

frontations and skirmishes and Florence, once again over the issue of outside influence over Florence. Within the ruling Guelfs, there was now conflict between the Black Guelfs, who still fully supported papal authority over Florence, and the White Guelfs, who had been willing to oppose Imperial influence, but were now firmly opposed to the controversial Pope Boniface VIII. Once again, the factions were defined by families and family ties rather than beliefs, with the rival Donati and Cerchi families, who had fought alongside each other at Campaldino, now taking up the Black and White causes respectively. In the chaos of these disturbances the merchants of the city exiled both factions for their violence in 1300,

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although they quickly allowed the Whites to return. The conflict was practically ended in 1301 when Boniface sent Charles of Valois and his men, then papal vicar, to mediate peace.

However, Charles instead allied his forces with the Blacks and participated in a loot and sack of the city alongside Corso Donati, killing many of the Whites and pushing the rest into exile in an action that would long give Charles the reputation of a vicious looter, with the two men allegedly destroying much of the city.

Despite his faction now controlling the city, Corso ignited a new series of civil conflicts within the Black faction, seeing himself as having not been properly rewarded for his prominent role in the defeat of the Whites. At one point it is claimed this included him once again burning a large portion of the city in an attempt to use fire against the house of a

rival. During this period of conflict he also worked with and used Whites and even Ghibellines to better his cause. Ultimately, after a failed attempt to allegedly make himself Lord, a mob was assembled by his enemies to finally bring him down, even though he claimed sanctuary

in a convent, they still had him killed in 1308.

Depiction in Dante’s Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri’s depiction of Corso has to be seen in the context of Dante’s own life and how intertwined with Corso’s own it was.

Dante was good friends with Corso’s brother,

Forese, and was certainly in contact with their sister Piccarda.

Piccarda Donati had originally joined a convent of nuns where she was satisfied to live her life, until Corso forced her to leave the convent and break her vows for the sake of a political marriage, in which Piccarda was very unhappy and died soon after – something which clearly shaped Dante’s view of Corso. Dante would go on to become a prominent and avid White, leading to his exile by Corso following his violent recapture of the city in 1301, who in 1302 issued a death sentence in abstention for Dante in his sons.

After his attempts to coordinate with other Whites to restore their rule from exile failed, Dante consigned himself to die a bitter exile.

In 2008, Florence’s city council voted to revoke the death sentence on Dante. His Divine Comedy, begun in 1308 and finished in 1320, un-

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surprisingly involves multiple references to Corso.

In his Divine Comedy, Dante places one of each of the three Donati siblings in a different realm of the afterlife.

Whilst inferno is set in 1300 so he never actually sees Corso Donati there, Dante interacts with both Corso’s brother and sister in purgatory then heaven.

In Canto XXIV he meets Forese in purgatory, who refers to Corso as “he, whose guilt is most [for the decline of Florence]” and states that upon Corso’s death he will be “dragg’d at heels of an infuriate beast. Toward the vale, where guilt hath no redemption.” In Canto II

of Paradise he meets Piccarda in the lowest sphere of heaven, and she states that the reason she is eternally in the lowest sphere is because of Corso dragging her from the convent and forcing her to break her vow to God, thus condemning her to this eternal fate.

Depiction in Dino Compagni’s Chronicle Dino Compagni was a Florentine politician who served as prior, and held this position when Corso violently took the city in 1301, due to this position he avoided exile despite being a White, although was never permitted to hold office again. Even before then, he had al-

ways held sympathy for increased democracy and the poorer populace of Florence throughout his career, which had naturally set him against Corso and the other proud nobles. Between 1310 and 1312 he secretly wrote his chronicle, covering the events he had lived through from 1280-1312.

Throughout his chronicle Compagni consistently portrays Corso as an unscrupulous and ambitious villain, referring to many events and allegations not mentioned elsewhere.

For instance, he sees the White Black conflict as emanating from an instance where Corso tried to marry a rich heiress to get her inheritance, and when her Cerchi family tried to stop him, he not only took it by force, but then killed multiple young Cerchis with a poisoned black pudding (Book 1, Chapter XX).

He also refers to many instances of Corso try-

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ing to attack a family by burning their property and accidentally starting strings of city-wide fires (Book 3, Chapter VIII). Describes Corso’s motives as “avarice and envy,” with his simple unwillingness to share being the cause of so many conflicts and deaths. He sees Corso’s allies as genuinely afraid of him, as he was so “ambitious and active” and could not ever be content with what he had (Book 3, Chapter XIX).

Ultimately describes Corso as “full of wicked designs, unprincipled and astute,” being “the enemy of democracies and of the popolani [common people].”

He states Corso’s “life was dangerous and his death reprehensible,” for it led to yet more violence (Book 3, Chapter XXI).

Depiction in Giovanni Villani’s Chronicle The scion of a merchant family, Villani had little involvement in politics until 1307 and unlike

the other two it is difficult to clearly link him to Corso or the factions in the civil war. Much of his life was shaped by his role in merchant companies and the consequences of the major financial crash in the early 1330s, as well as imprisonment due to bankruptcy as well as his role as a major Florentine diplomat.

His chronicle relies heavily on divine providence and divine intervention, although given contemporary beliefs this, perhaps, is only fair. His chronicle was started in 1300 and was written until 1346, although it begins in 1264.

In general he maintains a more nuanced view of Corso, although does, perhaps fairly describe the motives for his beginning of the third round of civil conflict as being “either through pride, or through envy, or through desire of lordship.” (Book 8, Entry 68) In multiple cases he provides multiple ways of interpret-

ing Corso’s actions to leave it open and avoid choosing a side, his final conclusion on the nature of Corso Donati is as follows: “This M. Corso Donati was among the most sage, and was a valiant cavalier, and the finest speaker, and most skilled, and of the greatest renown and of the greatest courage and enterprise of any one of his time in Italy, and a handsome and gracious cavalier in his person; but he was very worldly, and in his time caused many conspiracies and scandals in Florence to gain state and lordship; and for this cause have we made so long a treatise concerning his end, forasmuch as it was of great moment to our city, and after his death many things followed thereupon, as may be understood by the intelligent, to the end he may be an example to those which come after.” (Book 8, Entry 96) David Rowley

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Siward: England’s First Strongman

Holding onto power into England in the middle ages can be a remarkably difficult feat. Harry Clay takes a look at Siward as a successful example to illustrate the use of varying sources in historiographical study

Between 1016 and 1028, Cnut the Great worked to consolidate the thrones of England, Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden. By use of conquest and cunning, he sought to unify what became known as the North Sea Empire. This made him for a very brief period, the second single

Image: James Smetham | Death of Earl Siward

most powerful ruler in Europe, second only to Henry II of the Holy Roman Empire. Key to ensuring this power remained stable in England, was the continuation of the system of shires and earldoms ruled by regional figures to ensure that the relatively loose confederation of regions was

administered correctly.

By ensuring the right people held these seats of power, his own seat was protected, and initially, his choice for maintaining the Earldom of Northumbria was the “experienced warrior of tested intelligence” Erik of Norway. Erik, however, was unfortunate enough to have to undergo a medieval medical procedure that resulted in a haemorrhage, and the aged warrior’s legacy in Northumbria was left without any notable conquest. His successor was Siward, likely a Dane and probably the nephew of Thorgil Sprakling Under Cnut Under Cnut, Siward was one of three major earls, the others being Godwine, the Earl of Wessex and father

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of King Harold Godwinson, and Leofwine, the Earl of Mercia and general Danish nobleman. This “triumvirate of earls” as described

by Robin Fleming filled the power gap between an emperor and landowners. These strongmen each had challenges of their own, and Siward was left with the task of administering quite a distinct region. North of the Tees, towards the Firth of Forth, there lied borders with Strathclyde and Alba, and it was often at odds with the south of the Tees stretching towards the Humber.

Historically, an ealdorman had represented the north from Bamburgh, and another representing the south from York. Although Uhtred the Bold had held governorship over both Bamburgh and York before, he was a local to the north and fought against the marauding vikings. Siward was a Dane, and although sagas tell of a bold history of slaying

dragons, his actual abilities are left untested and by the standards of his predecessors, he’s an invader.

Under Other Monarchs With this risk in mind, his position isn’t perfect, and with any

three managed to take the throne over the following decade, starting with the noble Harold Harefoot, followed by Cnut’s son Harthacnut, and then Edward the Confessor, meaning that picking loyalties was a significant risk, but Siward took great

thegn, a wrong move could lead to a much shorter career, but Siward’s ability to judge a good move can be seen throughout his life. After the death of King Cnut in 1035, Siward was left in a tricky position. Several key claimants to the throne of England stood, with varying degrees of legitimacy, but all with some form of ability to make a move. Of those,

care to ensure his position was secure. Some see his decisions as a stepping back from Kingly affairs, with historian Frank Barlow noting that Siward maintained “a position of… prudent neutrality”, but this isn’t fair to all of his actions.

Some time in the short rule of Harthacnut, Siward moved against the Earl of Bamburgh and had him killed.

Image: John Martin | Macbeth

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This is notable as a personal achievement, as it means through his marriage he could claim lineage to Uhtred and consolidate both Bamburgh and York for himself, but also putting himself in higher standing with Harthacnut. Bamburgh was likely a more rebellious vassal, and by pacifying a Northern threat, Siward made his position a more attractive friend to the King, and made himself the key to the North. Further evidence of the powerful, yet precisely balanced position Siward held can be seen in a march

against Queen Emma, the mother of King Edward. Emma was noted for marrying two of the previous Kings of England, and had a rather substantial personal treasury. Although it provided little direct financial benefit for Siward of Northumbria, he marched with Edward, as well as the Earls of Wessex and Mercia in order to take such treasury for the King. This brought Siward even closer to the good books of the King, which became vital for Edward when the aforementioned Earl of Wessex raised his

Image: Valentine Cameron Prinsep| Death of Siward the Strong

flag in rebellion. Who should the King lean on when he’s in trouble?

None other than the noble Siward.

Macbeth Those who have actually heard of Siward likely know him through the Shakespear play, Macbeth. Indeed, it is true that in 1054, Siward led a campaign against Mac Bethad, the King of Alba. As documented evidence demonstrates that his influence went further south than the rough borders of Northumbria, as too did it stretch north at a great

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personal cost. The reasoning behind this expedition is not entirely clear, and is likely related to a number of causes including the previous king attacking Northumbria at Durham, and the attempt to bring Malcolm Canmore onto the Scottish throne. Although the details of the campaign are varied, by far in a way the most telling note of who Siward was of a person from any source or event is that of the death of his son Osbjorn.

Best Myths versus Actual Regional Power Abilities The methods from which we know the truth about Siward and his rule are also ultimately, one of the key reasons that our knowledge of him and those before him is so weak. The sagas and stories that record their life, such as “Vita et Passio Wadevie comitis” that tells a heroic tale of Siward’s son, Waltheof, are ripe with

myth and inaccuracy. This work tells the story of how Siward’s father was both a “distinguished earl and famous soldier” and also “ created from a white bear as a father and a noblewoman as a mother”. The likelihood of Siward’s grandfather being a polar bear is low, but from this we can gain the likely genuine reality that Siward was a particularly large individual, as he was given the nickname “Diere”, meaning stout or strong. We’re also told a story about how, as he suffered with dysentry in his last few days, he proclaimed that he didn’t want to die “like a cow”, and sought his armour and sword to die as the warrior he was. Again, there’s little evidence for this, but we’re taught about how tight his military success was to his character and his leadership.

These myths and legends are not the most accurate historical sources, but they’re

remarkably useful. Although we can slowly deduct pieces of his character from various tellings of rebellions and wars, we can instantly understand what sort of man Siward was from those pieces of writing. The knowledge we have from those documenting history is necessary and useful, but the stories told about Siward can do so much more to tell us who he was, rather than just what he did, and the combination creates a clear image of a powerful regional figure. The man who re-consolidated Bamburgh and York, the man whose influence stretched to the north of Alba and the south of Huntingdon, the invading brute who made himself indispensable to Kings, but never used his power unnecessarily. Siward was a perfect, and perhaps the first instance, of a regional strongman in England.

Harry Clay

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Histories and Stories: Narration in Historiography

A deep-dive into the fundamentals of history and its origins in story-telling through an examination of the multifaceted role of narration in history

The place and credibility of narrative history is an ongoing disciplinary dispute, one that contests and recognises a common belief that the opposite of narrative history is scientific history. As societies progress through time, their perception of the past changes – and so does their perception of history. The question of whether History is to be classified as a scientific or an artistic discipline is a plague to academics.

In this essay, the history that is referred to as ‘scientific’ is regarded as concise, factual, and following firmly established methodological and epistemological principles. How does narrative history differ from this? What is it about narrative history that academic historians find problematic?

Narrativity: Semantics and Distinctions In the English language there is a clear distinction between the words ‘history’ and ‘story’, so it is often taken for granted that these terms are at least different if not opposite.

A story may be fictional and involve a clear narrative with a beginning and an end. History, however, is considered an academic discipline, where most believe that even if there is a beginning and an end, they are inconceivable to humanity. The Russian language, however, does not offer such a visible distinction: the word istoriya means both ‘history’ and ‘story’ and is used extensively in both contexts.

The Spanish word historia works in a similar manner. Even if this is a purely linguistic issue,

it nonetheless makes one consider their meanings.

Moreover, in the Russian language there is no difference between the words ‘science’ and ‘humanities’. The technical sciences are evidently namedtekhnicheskiye nauki, while the humanities are called gumanitarniye nauki, i.e. humanitarian sciences. The word for ‘science’ (nauka), therefore, applies both to the humanities and the technical sciences.

The difference between the concept of ‘history’ and ‘story’ are not uniform when applied to several languages.

Nevertheless, while the English language treats the two terms as substantially different, there are certain aspects in each that correspond and overlap with each other, thus

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undermining the criticism of narrative history as a methodology or a subdiscipline.

Interpretation Narrativity in history is directly linked to interpretation. This corresponds with the scientific/artistic discipline dispute. Leopold von Ranke, for example, wrote in the nineteenth century: ‘A strict presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive as that may be, is the highest law’.

He stressed the significance of facts – and yet for him historical truth could be discovered through intuition and interpretation: ‘History must be science and art at the same time’. While he was considered ‘the father of scientific history’, he nevertheless believed that ‘re-creation’, so essential in historical methodology, made history an art.

Johann Droysen shared Ranke’s belief in the essentiality of intuition.

However, he encouraged scholars to pur-

sue moral judgements and apply them to their society; subjectivity was necessary. Therefore, while scholars of the ‘German model’ of the nineteenth century have attempted to proclaim history as ‘scientific’, they found it difficult to refrain from ideological judgements in the context of German nationalism, undermining the concept of a purely factual and ‘true’ history.

Interpretation: metahistory, metanarrative Scholars of the twentieth century continued the dichotomy discourse. The emergence of cultural history initiated by the Annales school diversified methodological processes. The Annales historians searched for a scientific method to analyse human behaviour and claimed narrative history to be ‘non-scientific’ and ‘ideological’. The linguistic turn reinforced the discussion regard-

ing the place of narrativity in historiography.

For example, Robert Berkhofer writes that “normal” history’s objective is to produce an ‘accurate representation of an actual past’, and compares such to maps and photographs.

Neither of these, however, can ever provide an accurate representation. Depending on the scale, a map only represents a portion of the wider reality; a continent map does not show the suburbs, suburban maps do not show the continent. A photograph is merely a fragment separated from its surroundings.

Similarly, history cannot represent ‘an actual past’ as there is no clear metanarrative, no universal explanation and interpretation of life that we have agreed upon. Hans Kellner argues that to comprehend history, one must look for a ‘crooked’ rather than a ‘straight’ picture. Contemplation broadens the horizon.

Narration frees history

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from the ‘legitimating authority of factuality’.

Thus, the absence of a clear subject in history encourages historians to create a narrative, developing new interpretations and perspectives.

Narrativity: emplotment The discourse leads to the issue of emplotment. For Hayden White, to acknowledge the plot of the historical narrative is to acknowledge the issues raised by the discourse. If one dismisses narrative history’s significance, one also dismisses the impact literature and poetry (culture) have upon the perceptions of reality. Roland Barthes agrees with White that with no narrative, history would be a collection of unrelated facts, like annals.

For White, a purely ‘scientific’, value-free language of history is void of attempts to analyse culture’s shaping of perceptions. In history, events are value-free;

interpretation is not.

Narrativity connects unstructured events through allegory and encodation (providing the information with a meaning). Therefore, the plot contributes to the search for ‘truth’ for history through interpretation, which is a fundamental aspect of historical methodology and therefore should not be discouraged within the discipline.

Narrativity: Emotion and Feeling Perhaps no one will be willing to deny that one of the main components of an engaging story is conflict. In relation to narrativity, conflict is an antithesis of stagnation. It is a constant catalyst that moves the world and its characters forward.

What, then, is the other essential component without which any story would be a lifeless accumulation of events? Without any doubt, that would be emotion. Most academics are anxious

to explore emotions of the past and fear that their arguments would not be substantial and will be treated with scepticism by fellow historians.

‘Biased’, ‘subjective’, ‘speculative’ – these are the words one might associate with involving the study of emotion in history. It is common knowledge that a historian cannot be affected by emotions and must remain objective in their analysis.

The overall perception of emotion in history became negative once historians emphasised the essentiality of objectivity. Moreover, the history of emotions is often dismissed as too speculative or circumstantial. This further relates to an issue involving literary sources as evidence in historical research. Literary research concerns not only emotions, but also such complex terms as honour, shame, or beauty.

The belief that fiction-

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al evidence cannot be used deteriorates the research significantly and limits the possible perspectives and interpretations. Neither secondary nor primary evidence can be studied separated from surrounding historiographical context.

Literature forms an essential part of the culture and can provide fundamental information regarding contemporary ideology, intellectual thought, popular culture, esoteric writing, or social, economic, and political culture. One must learn to interpret such texts and apply them to discovered historical evidence. Therefore, interpretation forms a highly significant part of historical scholarship and thus cannot be disregarded as a disadvantage of narrative history or of history in general.

It is thus evident that narration constitutes a fundamental quality of the historical dis-

cipline, whether it is ‘scientific’ history, narrative history or, for example, microhistory – a relatively recent subdiscipline in which narrativity plays an essential role. Since the nineteenth century scholars have been struggling to proclaim history as purely factual and scientific. Even Ranke acknowledged the primacy of interpretation for the dis-

cipline. Interpretation became more complex with the emergence of new studies. Modern Joint degrees and interdisciplinary courses allow students to explore new epistemology and methodology. History coupled with Sociology

might be more scientific than coupled with English.

It became increasingly challenging to establish an all-applicable methodology with the emergence of such subdisciplines as history of emotions or of mental health. This further provided a wider scope of possibility and flexibility in applying interpretation. For the goal of providing a wider scope of possibility and flexibility, narrativity becomes essential to ‘connect the dots’ and provide numerous unique perspectives.

One must be aware that the historical ‘search for truth’ has no visible termination point.

History has no expiration date: there is no universal truth to be found. It is thus a continuous and constantly reshaping development that historians should embrace.

Vera Ratnikova

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Cable Girls: A Turning Point in Spain’s Historical Memory?

In a thrilling review, Sophie Turbutt explores changes in Spain’s historical memory though an analysis of Netflix’s Cable Girls

Netflix’s Cable Girls is a gripping, heart-wrenching and fiercely empowering story which traces the lives of four young women who meet while working at Madrid’s first telephone exchange in 1928. The show, spread over five seasons, has achieved great popular acclaim, rated 7.7/10 on IMDB and scoring 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. It presents a dramatic tale of love and loss, with telenovela-style plot twists and moments of great tension and melodrama. The four principal characters each have their own arcs, as their romantic relationships and family troubles unfold, but they also connect deeply through gritty adventures and conspiratorial exploits.

Lidia, Carlota, Ángeles and Marga, collectively

and individually, develop a new sense of self as they navigate the difficulties of being working women in a patriarchal world.

The fifth series of Cable Girls, on which this review will focus, is set after a seven-year time jump to the final months of the Spanish Civil War. A daring choice by the show’s creators, this forced the writers, producers and actors to grapple with the still-divisive issue of Spain’s historical memory of the Civil War period. Until a Historical Memory Law was passed in 2007, Spanish official political discourse had swept the Civil War under the carpet. This was seen as crucial in order to maintain the atmosphere of reconciliation and compromise that characterised the establishment of dem-

ocratic government after post-Civil-War dictator Franco’s death in 1975. Although there exist internationally renowned Spanish films and television shows set during the Civil War, such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Morocco: Love in Times of War, and Butterfly’s Tongue, Netflix’s Cable Girls is different. Out of necessity, film and television productions within the Civil War genre, including the three aforementioned, define their characters and plot lines by their relationships to the War. Although characters are complex, they quite discretely belong to one side or the other. In contrast, Cable Girls introduces the Civil War much later on, once the major plot lines and characters are already well-established. Viewers watching the earli-

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er seasons as they were released did not know that a subsequent season would be set during the late 1930s.

This presents a much more nuanced depiction of the Civil War, where full, complex people, who audiences had come to know and love, now suddenly had to grapple with a new reality which forced them to take sides.

This reflects the very real dilemma faced by all Spanish individuals in 1936. For a highly popular show like Cable Girls to take this approach, it indicates an unprecedented readiness among Spanish and global audiences

to acknowledge and empathise with both sides’ motivations, preoccupations and ultimate humanity. This review, while hopefully avoiding overt spoilers, will unpack the diverse ways in which season five of Cable Girls represents a turning point in Spain’s historical memory of the Civil War.

To allocate the show’s main characters to the two sides of the Civil War was undoubtedly a challenge for the writers. Hindsight has revealed the consequences of the ultimate fascist victory, including unspeakable oppression and a thir-

ty-five-year dictatorial regime, and many argue that a Republican victory would have avoided all that. However, the recent polemic around the reburial of Franco has demonstrated that there are many who continue to support the fascist dictator and what he stood for since they may have potentially suffered more under a left-wing, republican, secularist government.

Moreover, since the Republican side included a range of political stances from moderate democratic socialism to communism and anarchism, support for that cause was, and

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still is, very diverse and conflicting. Therefore, when the writers of Cable Girls decided which characters would plausibly align themselves with each side, it could not be a simple case of delineating heroes and villains. Some principal characters are indeed placed firmly on one side or the other, but the majority occupy a less clear-cut ideological position. In fact, the characters’ motivations during the War are claimed to be more related to their practical needs for survival rather than their political principles; the series begins in late 1938 when Madrid was under siege by the Fascist forces and rumours suggested that the Republicans would soon capitulate. For this reason, despite certain characters’ clear political convictions in earlier series, the overwhelming mood that they convey is a desire for the siege, and by extension the War, to soon be over. There

are many poignant moments of internal conflict; for instance, one much-loved character who aligns with the Republicans but is terrified of dying at the Front considers carrying out sabotage on behalf of the fascists in exchange for escaping conscription. Such mo-

ments undermine the narrative expressed in traditional portrayals of the Civil War which categorise Spanish individuals as wholehearted members of one side or the other.

Spanish and global audiences of Cable Girls are confronted with an alternative story, one

that emphasises human fallibility and desperation for survival.

The way in which the writers and producers of Cable Girls address violence during the Civil War is significant as part of the show’s nuanced portrayal of the period.

Gratuitous violence, such as the torture of prisoners and unauthorised executions, is attributed to individuals rather than particular ideologies or causes. Neither side is made to look more abhorrent than the other. Moreover, there are several instances of soldiers granting mercy, compassion and reconciliation to members of enemy forces in certain circumstances, and this occurs on both sides of the conflict. This is not just a useful plot device to aid characters’ miraculous escapes from seemingly hopeless situations; it also helps encourage audience sympathy towards individual characters, irrespective of the polit-

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ical beliefs they fought for. Fear is also treated very sincerely by the writers of the series.

Most characters, male and female, are strongly preoccupied by fear for themselves and their loved ones, yet none of them are portrayed as cowardly or unlikeable as a result.

This directly undermines the typical perspective perpetuated by films and television shows set during wartime, where bravery and heroism are the main character traits that audiences are encouraged to celebrate.

Characters who audiences saw as bold and empowered in earlier seasons of Cable Girls are shown in series five to be downtrodden by years of suffering. Although the writers do give them triumphant moments of gumption and fierceness, Cable Girls offers a more honest portrayal of the grim reality of War. Viewers whose parents or grandparents lived through the War

are encouraged to rethink the narrative of heroes and villains, victors and victims, which they were taught growing up, and global audiences too are confronted by a view of War in which cowardice is almost normalised.

Like in all series of Cable Girls, gender is central to series five. Earlier seasons set in the late 1920s, between the Primo de Rivera regime and the birth of the Second Republic, had explored issues including women’s role in the workplace, divorce, abortion, domestic abuse, lesbian relationships, and transgender identity. These issues continued to be prevalent in series five, since they inevitably underpinned the everyday lives of the four female main characters and their relationships with each other and the society in which they lived. However, when the fascist forces take Madrid (not a spoiler, since it’s based

on historical precedent) gender issues become problematic to the characters in new ways. For instance, Óscar, a transgender man and part of the four main girls’ inner circle, is put in danger by the Catholic, transphobic views of the new ruling authorities. As well as offering a remarkably nuanced perspective of the Civil War, Cable Girls provides an unprecedented new angle on the period by considering it through the lens of gender history.

Once the second half of the series is released, it will be interesting to see how the programme continues to contribute to reshaping Spain’s historical memory. Without doubt, this popular Netflix show should be recognised as representing a significant shift in public attitudes towards a period that was, until recently, exempt from revisionism.

Sophie Turbutt

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Blanke History: The Untold Story of the Black Tudors

Through an analysis of the musician John Blanke, Charlotte Small tells the often overlooked story of the Black Tudors

The Tudors: morbid, mighty and magnificent. Of almost all the periods of English history, it is the Tudors that the public seem to have a never-ending insatiable appetite for.

However, in spite of this public fascination with this transformative period in English history, there is little acknowledgement of the Black Tudors. Summarised neatly by the Guardian’s Black History timeline which noted only three entries in the sixteenth century: ‘1562: First English slave trade expedition,’ ‘1596: Elizabeth I expels Africans’ and ‘1604: Shakespeare and Othello,’ the presence of Africans in Tudor England has often been assumed as one of racial discrimination and enslavement. To go even further, in her 1995 book Things of

Darkness the historian Kim Hall minimises the African narrative in Early Modern England as ‘too accidental and solitary to be given a historical statistic.’

However, black people played prevalent roles in England from Jacques Francis, the salvage diver, to John Blanke, a trumpeter in the court of Henry VII and Henry VIII between 1501-1511. It is John Blanke’s story in particular that is key to understanding Black Early Modern history and, more importantly, defying Hall’s dismissal.

Africans in Europe In order to understand how and why African people came to England, some wider European context must be provided. Whilst England was fighting among themselves in

the War of the Roses, Spain and Portugal had colonised the New World with the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1492 with Spain laying claim to South America and Portugal dominating Africa and the East Indies. By 1502 the trans-atlantic slave trade had begun and over the next century over 37,000 Africans had been scattered over South America and Europe, enabling Black Tudors to arrive not just from Africa but also Europe, America and all the places in between. England had limited contact with African people and thus did not have these rigid race laws that were prevalent in Europe and was primarily governed by social standing. When Africans were ambassadors, the English received them as such. When they

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were aboard a captured ship, they were at the bottom of the hierarchy with only their skills to aid any social mobility. Those like John Blanke, who had craft or musical skills, often fared better than most of Tudor society whose lives have commonly been deemed short, hard and brutish, thus accounting for his rise in society.

John Blanke The Musician It is in the Westminster Tournament Roll of 1511 John Blanke is first introduced to us, the lone black trumpeter on top of his horse.

This tournament followed the birth of Henry VIII’s second son by Katherine of Aragon.

Trumpeters were vital in the King’s performative role; from tournaments to funerals to weddings and coronations, they were required to bolster the grandeur of the King’s entrance. African musicians had been playing for European mon-

archs since the twelfth century and were often a sign of cosmopolitan wealth with James IV of Scotland and Eleanor, Queen of Portugal hosting many African musicians. Henry VII’s employment of John Blanke in 1501 upon his arrival in England, like the marriage he negotiated between his son, Arthur and Katherine of Aragon, was another of his attempts to enhance his international prestige through emulating European powers. Though there is no record of how John Blanke came to be working at the Tudor court, it is commonly believed that he came as part of Katherine of Aragon’s entourage

to England. Indeed, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castille were known for having a large Moorish courtly presence including Catalina who also came to England as part of Katherine’s retinue and was commonly described as ‘esclava que fue’ - or ‘the slave that was.’ If we are to judge John Blanke by Catalina’s experience, then we can assume that he too experienced better status in England than in Spain. His musical skill allowed him a comfortable position as a court museum and, in England, he was free - or at least freer with life being dictated far more by social class as opposed to his skin

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colour. Indeed, records from the king’s Chamber Treasury show John Blanke’s monthly wages to be 20 shillings or £12 a year - twice the amount of an agricultural worker and three times the amount of a typical servant.

This position also provided John Blanke with board, lodging and a clothing allowance.

John Blanke’s presence in Tudor courts was not restricted only to Henry VII’s reign. John Blanke was a noted trumpeter in Henry VIII’s coronation and, following the death of a fellow trumpeter, petitioned for an increase of pay to 16d a day. What this was for has yet to be explained, historian Miranda Kauffman suggests it was for the upkeep of his horse or perhaps new clothing. Whatever his motivation was, the petition worked with the new king granting his request, demonstrating the significance of court musicians in the Tudor court, regardless of their skin colour.

John Blanke as an example for Black Tudors John Blanke was only one of around 200 African people in early sixteenth century England and, though he cannot account for every African experience in England, his ability to rise in the ranks of English society, as a result of his musical skill, suggests that the African presence was not unwelcome. However, his different skin colour did not go unnoticed with his surname, “Blanke,” indicating a witty reference to his

skin colour by his English counterparts that was not uncommon amongst other African people in England in all levels of society. John Blanke was also not the last African person to serve in the English courts with them being noted in the courts of Elizabeth I and James I as well. Black Tudors continue to play important and personal roles (although unnamed) to Henry VIII in particular who is noted to have “turned to them as please him from peace to war and from war to peace” by French diplomats. Blanke’s recent acknowledgement by recent historians as a key part of Tudor courts has opened up a new, more diverse narrative for black British history that goes beyond slavery and is vital to everyone’s understanding of Britain’s global history.

Charlotte Small

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The Undeserved Legacy of Charles XII: Historiographical Failings in Military History

Utilising the case study of Charles XII of Sweden, David Rowley explores Great Man Theory in Military History and its impact on Charles’ legacy

The “Great Man” approach to military history, increasingly rooted out from the current mainstream, undermines the truth of its importance as an academic and cultural study. Generals and soldier-kings are placed at the heart of military history’s narrative, which is twisted into a series of wrestling matches between great warriors in a test of wit and will. Placing great generals on a pedestal as unstoppable, titanic gods of war creates figures for far-right movements to rally behind, this can be seen with the Nazi use of characters such as Arminius, Charlemagne and Frederick the Great on their propaganda.

This reduces the far more prevalent determinants of warfare to

something ignored, such as technology, chance, and the actions of lower commanders.

Our understanding of historical war is diminished.

In part, this can be seen as a consequence of the snobbish attitude of mainstream historians towards military history despite its crucial role in the human experience and history. For example, historians like William Miller dismiss military historians as simple “gun lovers”. This lack of academic attention has insulated the area from critical developments in historiography, which promotes military studies’ centring on the Great Men narrative. But another part of the problem is that despite its lack of

academic appeal, the history of wars, battles, and generals, is by far the section of history with most popular appeal. At almost any time of day one is guaranteed to find at least two documentaries or films dedicated to the subject, and in many book shops the military history section is as large as the rest of history combined.

Fascistic morons the world over take pride in their nation’s past military achievements, Brits proudly saying “we beat Napoleon” as if they personally held a cavalry square at Waterloo. This tribal public obsession with military history has polluted the scholarship, with the success of works being far more measured through sales or news-

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paper reviews than academic criticism.

Charles XII of Sweden, who pulled the country into the disastrous Great Northern War at the age of only eighteen, is the epitome of this problem. Charles won a long string of battles that in theory are exceptionally impressive, when all factors other than simple troop numbers are ignored. An image has been formed of the great Carolus Rex who defeated army after army of larger Polish or Russian forces, his tactical brilliance, his men’s belief in him and (depending on whether you’re a far-right activist) the inherent superiority of Swedes over the Slavic Poles and Russians. From pro-Nazi movements comparing his defeats of Russia to Hitler’s, to modern Facebook meme pages (namely Swedish Imperial Memes) whose content combines their glorification of Charles with extreme anti-ref-

ugee and anti-Semitic content, Charles has always been at the core of the Swedish far-right.

Much of this is tied to three historical myths around Charles: 1) That he personally was responsible for the quality of the Swedish army, 2) That Russia and (especially) Poland maintained powerful armies that it was impressive to defeat, and finally (3 That he personally was a master of strategy and tactics.

In terms of the first, the quality of the Swedish military must be seen

in the context of The Scanian War, where Sweden was ultimately defeated by Denmark and its allies. Following this defeat, Sweden established a firmer professional standing army, sent officers to study abroad to improve the officer corps and increasingly adopted modern tactics. This established the disciplined, modern army that Charles XII was then fortunate enough to command. Charles was doubtless an inspirational figurehead, but the army was his father’s achievement.

In terms of the second, another powerful myth which has similarly been championed by the far-right feeds into this – The second perpetuated idea is the defeat of Polish military dominance, created by the role of Polish Winged Hussars after the popularisation of the Siege of Vienna in 1683.

However, by the Great

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Northern War the majority of the Polish army was ill-equipped, technologically behind, and poorly-motivated. Similarly, the Russian army at the beginning of the war was ill-equipped, poorly-drilled, and consisted of illiterate serfs that quickly crumbled.

It is no surprise that the professional army constructed by Charles XI excelled particularly well against such forces, and was defeated after the restructuring of the Russian army along Western European doctrines.

Finally, Charles’ reputation as a tactical and strategic genius personally responsible for bringing Sweden victory time and time again is similarly undeserved.

Across his battles, his tactics rarely varied from overconfident, direct frontal attack which, when commanding his professional and disciplined army against inferior foes, unsur-

prisingly worked. This was insufficient against the later Russian army.

His grand strategy for winning the war can very easily be placed into question – although that being said retrospective criticism of a general’s broader strategy is always easy to find. The strategic criticisms of Charles can be summarised simply by describing him as far too overconfident, whether it was in leaving Russia alone for many years while he was on his Polish adventure, giving them time to restructure their army, attacking Russia whilst lack supplies and lying to his commanders about their destination or massively overestimating Cossack support.

His decisive and easy early victories seem to have never allowed him to develop a proper mind for strategy or tactics.

The military history of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth

century is fascinating as it represents polities moving towards the professional, artillery-reliant armies that would come to define the next two centuries of warfare. The Great Northern War is particularly interesting as part of this trend, as it represents a newly-reformed Swedish army proving the worth of these innovations on the battlefield, and Russia ultimately participating in a huge restructuring of their military forces to catch up. As much as Charles XII is an interesting historical figure, he certainly is no titan of military achievement.

But to simplify this to Charles XII as a Great Man not only unfairly represents this period, it also gives the farright a figure to rally around.

David Rowley

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On the Savages: The Concept of ‘Barbarian’ in Political Thought

Fin Bosworth analyses the ideology behind the concept of the ‘barbarian’ through close analysis of contemporary writers of political theory and their lasting impacts.

What do we think of, when we describe a barbarian? In pasts long gone, the barbarian was a term used to describe a people strange, different, both in culture and language.

The Greeks, for example, first described their stuttering, unintelligible neighbours as barbaros (βάρβαρος).

But this form of a ‘barbarian’ was something unique to the European world, in which the term did not inherently carry a hierarchy of basic human dignity.

It was confined by the geographical limitations of what people ‘knew’, a basic notion of civilisation that was ubiquitous [outside of rhetorical bouts of xenophobia]. There was nothing other than Europe, save for maybe a vague notion of strange peoples of the East.

Then, these Europeans

suddenly discovered a people unmentioned in the Bible and never before heard of. This unique moment in human history, the exploration of the New World, began to level our conception of the barbarian: more than just an uncivilized other, but a creature truly unhuman.

Voyage to the New World Christopher Columbus’ voyage in the late fifteenth century was by no means the first European travel to the Americas, but it was the most important. The European musket was free to carve itself out a bloody chunk from a population of what they saw as cannibals, barbarians, and savages who fought with little more than sticks and stones. These merchants of death and

their process of annihilation (leaving aside the Portuguese), such as Spanish conquistadors, had only ample disregard for the heathen. Within a span of decades, these travellers had not only intentionally looted and ransacked the New World, but had inadvertently destroyed native Mesoamerican and Caribbean civilisation by the spreading of smallpox, typhus, and measles.

The population of Columbus’ Hispaniola (the modern-day island of Haiti) fell from 8 million natives in 1492 to zero by 1535. Christopher Columbus first described these natives as a “hopelessly timid people… [but] most ingenious men, [they] navigate these seas in a wonderful way and describe everything well”. This paternalistic admiration was soon

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replaced by the brutality of conquistadores like Francisco Pizarro and Hernán Cortés, who raped, seized, schemed, and killed away the rights of sovereignty from these local leaders to the complete disrepair of their million-strong societies. Once Europeans arrived on the shores, the barbarian was not even blinked at as an equal.

But this annihilation and genocide did not pass unheard. Perhaps the best thing to ever come out of the Catholic church was its almost uncharacteristic defence of the rights of these natives, whose rights were so quickly destroyed by Hispanian invaders. The Enlightenment and its scholastic thinkers were instrumental writers in preserving some of the most modern, humanitarian arguments which sought to secure the rights of the beleaguered natives. It was here, argued by these learned men, that the

conceptof the ‘barbarian’ in its Christian and colonial sense, would become debated in a unique way. Unlike before in human history, the ‘barbarian’ was no longer just a discursive term for someone who didn’t speak and act like you, it was something so utterly detached from anything you knew as society. The barbarian would inflict terror in the heart, not only by the virtue of their own nature, but by the fact that they were aliens to the European concept of a people.

Vitoria: New Definitions One of the most notorious scholastic writers was Francisco de Vitoria. What defined the native, in the eyes of the European, was their position as a savage; a barbarian that was not capable of possessing control of their faculties, which justified European dominance. While the notion of a barbari-

an as being a savage was nothing new, the unique disregard that Christians had for the undeveloped unbeliever was unparalleled even by their treatment of Muslims or Jews. The underlying theory of de Vitoria’s work was that the Pope, who had gifted a grant of land to the Spanish and Portuguese to facilitate their conquests, had no authority over the natives. He argued that, if criminals such as rapists are not considered deprived of their ‘conscience’ to self-govern, why should the unbeliever be treated as something lesser? If mortal sin does not deprive a man of spiritual jurisdiction, then man cannot lose dominion to mortal sin as sin is a rational power – and God has made man in his image, a fact even applying to the socalled barbarian. The conversion by force as a justification for war was not conducive with Christ, nor did the temporal man have any ju-

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risdiction over the heathen. If “God does not grant land to the disobedient”, then it does not stand to reason that God would allow these people to exist in harmony. The Christians had no authority to punish the natives for their sin, but did have a Christian duty to govern them away from their sins.

The Valladolid Debate De Vitoria’s work was so ground-breaking for the stance it took, that it inspired the work of his university with other intellectuals such as Bartolomé de las Casas, who actually derided de Vitoria for being too conservative in his views. To las Casas, de Vitoria had done little else than sought to spiritually cleanse the natives of any conjured sin. Las Casas is perhaps best recorded in his debates with fellow Spanish scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, in what has been known as the Valladolid debate (1550-51).

First, Sepúlveda derided the natives’ actions of cannibalism, inability to self-govern, weakness, and lack of virtue [specifically their acts of cannibalism and human sacrifice]. The idea of a codified natural law in strength, “the dominion of the perfect over the imperfect, the strong over the weak, superior virtue over vice”. To him, the barbarians were not civilised or humane, therefore, they were inclined to evil and were in violation of that order of superiority. A people’s sovereignty is determined by their “prudence and wisdom”, and even if the Spanish soldiers had acted with brutality, the guiding principle of this fact to abolish barbarian customs was a necessary evil. War, to Sepúlveda, is not just aimed at victory and peace but the betterment of humanity itself.

In contrast, las Casas provides perhaps one of the most modern arguments on the sub-

ject of barbarism and a unified sense of human nature. He was a man who had actually spent time with the ‘natives’ and taken the time to learn their customs and convert them to Christianity himself.

The first step of Las Casas’ argument was to dismantle the notion of the ‘barbarian’ itself, which de Vitoria had done little for and instead sought to spiritually cleanse the natives of any conjured sin. If barbarians are “any cruel, inhumane, wild and merciless man acting against human reason”, then the only people that applied to were the Spanish, who had “surpassed all other barbarians” in their acts of rape and pillage. The native Mesoamericans were not incapable of learning, and the discursive turn of the ‘barbarian’ was no different from how the Greeks viewed the Romans, or how the Romans viewed the Greeks 1,000 years earlier. While he agreed

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with the notion that the term best fit the unbelievers of Christ, “what man of sound mind will approve a war against men who are armless, ignorant, gentle, temperate, unarmed, and destitute of every human defence?”

Legacy of Las Casas Las Casas, with his own paternalistic turn, even defended the acts of cannibalism and human sacrifice, by stating that reason has nothing to do with moral beliefs – and the structures of their society reflected something that could not be understood in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Perhaps the most pervasive legacy of las Casas was this final thought.

It was impossible, for las Casas, to confidently describe a society of people as ‘evil’ because of the practices of their world, or from the developments of their continent – one that had been completely untouched by Europe for the entirety of hu-

man history. As put by later enlightenment philosophers, in perhaps one of the most eloquent descriptions of this philosophy:

They are savages at the same rate that we say fruits are wild... We ought rather to call those wild whose natures we have changed by our artifice and diverted from the common order. In those, the genuine, most useful, and natural virtues and properties are vigorous and sprightly, which we have helped to degenerate in these, by accommodating them to the pleasure of our own corrupted palate.

- Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), ‘Of Cannibals, 1580’.

Perhaps there is no catharsis in examining these old theologians.

But, there is something

reassuring about the timelessness of human nature, and how debates and discourse are always just a regurgitation of the past.

The ‘barbarian’ does not exist, not truly. It is a concept we use to describe those whom we are afraid of, who we do not understand, and those whom we find abhorrent. They are different. The barbarian is not a new phenomenon, it is someone we have been describing ever since there were more than one ‘people’ - from what ‘natural rights’ we can ascribe to the barbarian, to what traditions they hold that can actually be considered ‘civilised’. The ‘discovery’ of the New World 500 years ago, and the advent of colonialism, represented the apex of this clash of cultures. So long as there is a racialized hierarchy, the tribal ‘other’, there is the lesser and the superior.

Fin Bosworth

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The Soldier’s Experience in The Face of Battle (1976)

Military history has traditionally, and it would seem continues to, have something of a poor reputation in academic circles. It seems beyond dispute that the field is the subject of much sniping and sniggering behind hands at the intellectually lightweight fascinations of white men, obsessed with swords and machine guns and the imagined glories of the organised bloodshed of the past.

However, the late Sir John Keegan’s seminal and ground breaking 1976 work The Face of Battle would seem to fly, decidedly, in the face of such an assessment. Keegan’s book focuses not on the generals of armies, nor of grand notions of the honour of victory or the bitter sting of defeat. The book does not take a top down view of warfare, but presents the experience of bat-

tle from eye-level, with the standard soldier’s whole experience of the mechanics and realities of the battlefield taking centre stage, not just the isolated quotes of the rankers, lifted from some dusty and unpublished memoir, peppering the pages like macabre one liners.

The experience of actual battle, not simply warfare in general, in any era, is a club to which few belong. For those who have met someone with such an experience, the imagination often boggles in its attempt to reckon with what such a reality may have been like. It is the task of laying out these realities plainly and starkly which Keegan undertakes. He does this through a discussion of three battles from the collective consciousness of British history. Agincourt, in 1405, during the third

act of the Hundred Years War, Waterloo, in 1815, at the climax of what history would come to know as the Napoleonic Wars, and the first day of the Battle of the Somme, in 1916, at the height of World War One. Keegan’s tactical assessment of warfare from this grounded position in amongst the thick of the fighting also provides insight when it comes to the critical analysis of popular historical myths.

Whilst the failure of the massive French heavy cavalry charge at Agincourt surprises may, Keegan offers a more sober explanation of the efficiency of such a tactic. Whilst the thundering of thousands of hooves was no-doubt an awe-inspiring sight, for tightly packed menat-arms in full plate mail, there was little to fear from such a manoeuvre, especially

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with their archers behind a forest of stakes and thick woods protecting both flanks.

Similarly, Keegan discusses how most people have traditionally been wounded or killed in war (whilst breaking and fleeing, until very modern times), and relates the experiences of using various weapons, and having those weapons used upon you.

In more recent times, there has rightly been a greater focus placed upon the study of

groups undoubtedly affected by warfare, but whose stories had often been untold, such as women, children and refugees. This is certainly to be commended, but for those who seek a study of warfare neither from the perspective of the officer nor the non-combatant, but from that of the average soldier, then The Face of Battle is a must-read.

This book stands tall and proud, having firmly weathered the

test of time, as not only one of the best academic accounts available on what the human experience of war may have been like, but also as a staunch and robust defence of what military history, when done right, can and should be able to intellectually achieve.

Destruction!

Dystopia! Deplorable? These are some of the many phrases we could choose to describe Peter Harness’ The War of the Worlds - a three-episode BBC adaptation of H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel.

With divided opinion over the programme’s authenticity to the novel, effective adaptation, and overall audience

appeal, it is fair to say that insufficient attention has been paid to the historical accuracy of the period being portrayed. As is natural with all book adaptations, a large amount of alteration was necessary to dramatise the fiction effectively for the screen. With an unsubtly deemed ‘Mega-budget’ for the

trailer alone, it is quite clear that this was not intended to be a smalltime production. As well as the commendable special effects, the programme has a prestigious cast including Eleanor Tomlinson, Rafe Spall and Rupert Graves. There is no doubt that making The War of the Worlds has been an exceptional

Tom Davies

Historical Accuracy in the BBC’s War of the Worlds

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feat, but how well does it reflect the history it is meant to be portraying, and how well does it stand as a testament to the past?

The first obvious change made to H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds in the BBC adaptation is the rather peculiar jump into the future to the year 1905 from the original date in the late 19th Century, a mere 8 years. This begs the question, why such an inconsiderable yet oddly specific change in period? Such a precise alteration is surely not inconsequential. Three separate and equally important thoughts spring to mind.

Firstly, perhaps Harness wished to exhibit emotions associated with the 20th century rather than the 19th Century to his audience. To a British audience, the 19th century can perhaps be described as a century of Imperialism, Euro-

pean domination, economic growth and general prosperity. Despite many of us attempting to disassociate those ideas from our past, many still delegate this era as a period of ever-growing accomplishment. In contrast, the 20th Century has been viewed by modern audiences as an era of violence, of world war, and above all, of destruction; therefore, it would prove wise to associate this tale of similar emotions with a period in which the audience can recognise those same perspectives. Then, in order to remain relatively accurate to the tale, Harness might have had the forethought to not alter the period so much that it would affect the story. A jump from the Victorian to the Edwardian sounds like the difference of a century, but in actuality, this was only 7 or 8 years. Luckily for Harness, Britain saw few revolutionary changes during these dates. Yes

there were technological progressions and political changes, but the great majority of things stayed relatively the same. The way they fought war, the clothes they wore, their attitudes, and way of life, were almost identical.

Finally – and possibly most importantly – is the blatant reference made towards contemporary Anglo-Russian relations. In the first episode we learn that one of the leading characters, George, is a journalist – albeit a disgraced one for his relationship with Emma, and we see him report to his place of work where he discusses writing an article on the Dogger Bank incident, whereby the Imperial Russian navy unwittingly fired upon a British trawler fleet in the North Sea mistaking them for Japanese crafts. Surprisingly, the incident did in fact take place exactly as they described in the programme. Bar

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the incorrect date of when it happened, the British public’s attitudes which surrounded its occurrence were well portrayed and remained almost completely accurate.

It is perhaps topical for Harness to invoke these fears by presenting a similar situation in his adaptation which may lead the audience to speculate whether people 100 years before them suffered the same fears and anxieties, an attempt to invigorate emotions that played off present relations between Russia and the UK. Now we must address the most common grudge against the programme: How present-day writers seem to ‘fanaticise’ appealing to a so-called “woke” audience.

Harness’ work saw numerous news outlets make the quick jump to ridicule the show for its blatant and deliberate attempt at politicising a muchloved classic tale. The

Sun described ‘A new politically correct BBC version’ which ‘attacks religion and the British Empire’. The Spectator did not hesitate to decimate the show’s achievements describing it ‘as bad as Doctor Who’. The Spectator continues that the BBC’s adaptation was ‘incredibly sad’, even questioning whether we ‘will ever again see a faithful, honest, politics-free adaptation on the BBC?’

A good adaptation of a novel should aim to honour the legacy of the writer, and The War of the World’s does this superbly. H.G. Wells was a deeply political writer and throughout his life he sought the implementation of greater privileges and rights for the working classes. His stories were teeming with allegorical meanings and morals, and sometimes they appeared to us in plain sight. Why should we not then alter the tales being retold to

suit the frustrations of present-day society?

Why should we not be able to use these stories to the same effect but instead enfranchising the opinions and hopes of our generation as he did with his?

I found most responses to Harness’ The War of the Worlds to be overly critical. However, I will admit that I would not cry if I were never able to see it again.

Based purely on historical authenticity, the show has, remarkably for a BBC adaptation, remained accurate to the period it wished to portray – apart from the Martian tripods, of course. It has maintained a forward-looking presentation and reflection of the history surrounding the narrative, which I personally think H.G. Wells would, maybe not have enjoyed, but certainly respected for its brilliant use of allegorical tones.

An honour and emphasis of his legacy.

Morrison Wilson

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From Technonationalism to Superficial Environmentalism: Japan’s Political Olympics Stephanie Wilson analyses how Japan utilises the Olympic Games for political means.

Throughout the 20th century, the Olympics have come to symbolise peace, diplomacy, internationalism, and represent political power. A political Olympic Games may appear contradictory, but previous Olympics such as Berlin 1936 and London 1948 were tied to propaganda, war, and political showmanship. Tokyo 1964 and Tokyo 2020 serve as powerful examples of the political Olympics, and powerful comparisons on the continued benefit of the Olympics in Japan. Throughout the 1964 Games, and in preparation for the 2020 Games, Japan has exerted and gained political power. I will assess in particular the importance of nuclear devastation, imperialism, and “technonationalism” versus envi-

ronmentalism, to show some of the ways Japan has politicised the Olympics.

Soft vs. Hard Power Despite changes in the political and physical climate from 1964 to 2020, Japan has utilised the competition of the Olympics to gain international and domestic power. Specifically, ‘soft power’, a term coined by Joseph Nye in 1990. Whereas ‘hard power’ is based on tangible resources such as gross national product (GNP), the military, and formation of a physical empire, ‘soft power’ is measured by ideology, international respect, and for Japan, what E. Taylor Atkins refers to as ‘gross national cool’.

In a post-war world in which Japan’s international image was all-but destroyed, the

Olympics served as an attractive opportunity to display ‘soft power’ and regain international recognition as a peaceful country.

Utilising the Nuclear From 1945 to 2011, Japan has experienced more nuclear devastation than any other nation. John Dower argues Hiroshima and Nagasaki became ‘icons of Japanese suffering’ in the 1950s and 1960s, fuelling a strong anti-nuclear movement in the country. The bombings’ presence was felt during the 1964 Games, as a student born on the day America’s bomb fell on Hiroshima, Yoshinori Sakai, lit the Olympic flame. Japan’s remembrance of the bombings established the tone of these Games as one of resilience and na-

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tional strength. It also reinforced, especially to America, the image of Japan as an innocent victim in the war.

Japan reclaimed its experience of nuclear destruction to contribute to the country’s national image and ‘soft power’ at the Olympics.

The country’s complicated relationship with nuclear power developed when American influence led to Japan’s adoption of nuclear energy through Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” campaign.

In March 2011, Japan became a nuclear victim once again. The Fukushima nuclear power-plant disaster proved that Japan’s

Image: Sankei | Getty Images

adoption of ‘peaceful’ nuclear energy was not sustainable. In 2020, nuclear disaster would be used once again, as the torch relay was planned to begin the Japanese leg in Fukushima.

The Legacy of Imperialism.

A point of contention and controversy at both Games has been the inclusion of Japan’s ‘Rising Sun’ flag (Hinomaru). The flag, although not made the national flag until 1999, has strong ties to Japan’s imperial past.

In 1964, a redesign of the original flag attempted to reinvent it as a symbol of democracy and international-

ism. The imperial flag is to be used again at the 2020 Games. Despite Japan’s view of the flag as peaceful, the imperial connotations have not diminished.

In September 2019, South Korea made a formal request for the flag to be banned at next years’ Olympics in Tokyo, but was refused.

This ongoing diplomatic row threatens relations between the two countries, as a South Korean MP described it as Asia’s equivalent to a swastika. Whether with imperialist intentions or not, Japan’s use of the flag has evoked painful memories of its past and politicised the Games.

From “Technonationalism” to Environmentalism.

The clearest display of ‘soft power’ by Japan surrounding the Summer Olympics was “technonationalism” in 1964, and environmentalism in 2020 – two demonstrations of international power

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relevant to the Games’ contexts. Japan’s postwar economic miracle was facilitated by American investment in technology. National power and pride after 1945 and at the 1964 Olympics were derived from Japan’s technological innovations and breakthroughs, such as the Shinkansen bullet train, computers and more precise timing devices. Japan became a country known for its technology companies and products at the 1964 Games. After demilitarisation, technology became a way for Japan to show its national pride, and the rise of consumerism during this period meant it was respected on an international scale.

A global consciousness of climate change and recognition that waste is not sustainable has increased both individual and collective responsibility for the environment. This was central to the 2020 Games, as organisers have used recycled smartphones to make the medals. While this shows a public and governmental consciousness for the climate, it should be labelled as superficially environmental. Despite only accounting for 1.64% of the world population, Japan’s carbon emissions account for 4% of the global total, the fifth largest in 2016 according to the International Energy Agency. Therefore, Japan’s

commitment to environmentalism within the Tokyo 2020 Olympics cannot be seen as truly genuine, due to the country’s role in climate change. Instead, like technonationalism, environmentalism has been used as a tool to gain ‘soft power’ on the international stage.

In Japan, the Olympics have not just been seen as an apolitical international sporting event.

They have served as a source of ‘soft power’ for the country, from utilising nuclear disasters, to imperial legacies, and international respect through technology and environmentalism. The 1964 and 2020 Games serve as useful comparisons for Japanese politics and history, and an important reminder that the Olympic Games have long had widespread implications for geopolitics and international relations, as well as national pride.

Stephanie Wilson

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Churchill: Statues as Historical Artefacts

War-hero. White supremacist. Saviour. Racist. These are just a few of the contradictory labels that have filled recent news reports about the former British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

We all know him. Ingrained in our minds as the war-time hero who led Europe to victory and simultaneously saved the world from a fascist tyranny. Only in 2002 was he voted the ‘Greatest ever Briton’. Absent from the curriculum however, is the famine which took over 3 million lives in British India at his command in 1943. So why now, are some demanding that his statue be torn from its honorary place in Parliament Square?

Demonstrations have proven how quickly we become blind to things we do not actively acknowledge.

Perhaps, until recently, few of us would have stopped to question Churchill’s character or whether his prestigious place in public history is as well-founded as it appears. Our predisposition to associate statues with glorious heroes of our past, has rendered the public blinkered to the reality of historical figures and the impact their glorification still has in the present.

To many people, the statue of Churchill acts as a permanent reminder of how value systems have failed to change. The glorification of an arguably racist man has subconsciously normalised the dominance of one group over another, proving that public history influences historical thought more than we appreciate.

If Churchill’s statue is removed, discussion and education about its controversy risks neglect. Possibly modifications which both draw attention to its history and do justice the complexity of debate surrounding it should be sought. As a historical artefact the statue could come to represent a long overdue historical change in social attitudes to race and serve as an important educator for future generations. Among so many things, the protests highlight our collective responsibility to acknowledge all of our history, not just the finest hours, but the darkest ones too. History is a process, not a fixed position: it is necessary to challenge and seek to change long-term pre-concluded ideas of a romanticised national history when they far from correlate with reality.

Lucy Wilde

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Coffee and Blood: Dublin’s Most Infamous Coffeehouse

Through the case study of Lucas’ Coffee House in 18th Century Dublin, Vera Ratnikova explores coffehouse culture and duelling as well as the insitutions inspiration of emnity rather than amnity

It is generally acknowledged that most eighteenth-century commentators regarded their age as the age of reason, politeness, manners, and civility.

You might think of the periodicals, theatres, pleasure gardens, coffeehouses – Enlightened Georgians expressing Enlightened views in the Enlightened public sphere. An admirer of Georgian literature or an insightful historian may, in turn, think of sex, scandal, sensibility, duelling, or materialism. Coffeehouses especially might be thought of as an epitome of the polite public sphere – an effective way of disseminating news, both verbally and through newspapers, or generating commerce. Much like most aspects of the Enlightenment, the cof-

feehouses quite often failed to live up to the Enlightenment standards of politeness and rationality. The significance of coffeehouse culture during the eighteenth century has been acknowledged by numerous historians, starting with Roy Porter and Paul Langford.

The coffeehouse provided an essential social platform for people (generally ‘middling sort’ white men) to convene and discuss current political, social, and economic affairs. It is widely accepted that commerce was key: the coffee trade and the press served as instruments to construct the social mechanism that generated ideas, commercial partnerships, friendships, or, quite often, conflict.

Coffeehouses were generally open to all,

which allowed men of different views to voice their opinions in public space. In Ireland, the rise of the coffeehouse was ‘an imitation of English trends reinforced by the link with the imperial trade.

These venues provided a fruitful opportunity for the Irish gentry to satisfy their love for spectacle. They gave them an opportunity to demonstrate their politeness, intellect, and sociability in a new, civilised way. These expressions, however, did not always proceed with civility: ‘the public sphere was often rude and dangerous’.

The rise of the coffeehouse coincided with the Irish gentry adopting the English code of honour. The duel was on the rise in Ireland in the second decade of the century, reaching

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Image: Thomas Stuart | Coffeehouses in The Masonic Female Orphan School of Ireland 1892

its peak in the 1770s and 1780s. Sir Jonah Barrington, a notable jury and a duellist who provided historians with colourful descriptions of late eighteenth-century Irish life in his memoirs, noted that duelling became an essential part of a respectable man’s education along with heritage. The code of honour during the eighteenth century clearly expressed the conviction that to refuse a challenge was to not only present oneself as a coward, but also that the refusal would inevitably result in one’s imminent loss of honour. The Penal Laws ensured that Catholics were forbidden to bear arms; this,

however, would change by the end of the century. Thus, duelling was a practice that during the early and the middle of the eighteenth century was associated primarily with the Protestant elite, a group which saw their honour as one of their most prized possessions. The following evidence, however, presents the elite duellists in a different light.

The coffeehouses seem to have been first introduced to the central area of Dublin and to eventually spread beyond the Pale, increasingly significant components of Dublin’s elite public sphere.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, Dublin had eleven coffeehouses. Rather than

being dispersed and accommodating various areas of the city, these coffeehouses were practically located next to each other.

For example,Lucas’s Coffeehouse opened in the 1680s on Cork Hill, coinciding with the rise of coffeehouses in England. By the middle of the eighteenth century it had earned the reputation of the ‘epicentre of Dublin fashion’. The city’s elite convened in the coffeehouse to voice their opinions, share latest gossip, discuss latest news and, more importantly, to perform in an intellectual environment.

Despite its reputation, the venue struggled to live up to the standards of civility and politeness. The coffeehouse’s waiters were prone to aggressive conduct, molesting the passers-by, insulting them, and drenching them with filthy water.

David Ryan describes how a chairman insulted a gentleman at the entrance to the coffee-

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house and ‘received in reply a sword-cut that almost severed one of his fingers’. This is certainly a long way from some of London’s fashionable coffeehouses and taverns which set the accommodation and pleasing of their customers as their primary goal. Francis Hutcheson wrote that Lucas’s Coffeehouse attracted ‘free wits’ who in turn used the venue as their haunt.

An impetus to conflict was created – Charles Lucas, the supporter of Thomas Sheridan during the theatre riots in 1747, complained that Edward Kelly and his Catholic supporters were flooding Lucas’s Coffeehouse, thus pushing away the usual Protestant clientele.

The coffeehouse became a city-life equivalent to parties and balls that were common in country houses. While coffeehouses were believed to be the epitome of civility and politeness, it nevertheless attracted heavy criti-

cism directed against the aristocratic vice and decadence.

If Lucas’s reputation as Dublin’s most fashionable venue rose by the middle of the eighteenth century, it also gained notoriety of quite a different sort. Between 1748 and 1758, Lucas’s coffeehouse’s reputation for duelling was at its

height. So prominent was its notoriety for duels that it became colloquially known as the ‘Surgeon’s Hall’, named so due to a supposedly frequent case of deceased duellists’ bodies being displayed

on the coffeehouse’s tables. James Kelly rightfully notes that such a connotation is misleading as there is little to no evidence to support that supposition. The Bucks, a group of fashionable yet decadent young men, were believed to be parading across the Coffeehouse, sweeping their gowns and challenging anyone who accidentally stepped on them to a duel. This, again, does not have any substantial evidence. What it does prove, however, is that the public overestimated the elite’s proneness to picking up the sword or the pistol. The attack on duelling, though ineffective throughout the century, involved heavy criticism of the elite and their carelessness, inclination towards violence, and shallowness.

While Lucas’s reputation was expressed most fruitfully through city gossip, there is nevertheless secure evidence that supports its notoriety. The interior

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of the Coffeehouse did not provide a suitable duelling ground, but it’s backyard served as a location of numerous duels. The first duel occurred in 1725, between Nicholas Jones, an army captain, and the Honourable Colonel Nugent. The conflict resulted in the death of Nugent and a legal case against Jones, who ended up being released on the grounds of being charged with manslaughter (a common occurrence throughout the century). At least seven duels took place between 1748 and 1758. In January 1748 Arthur Mervyn inflicted a fatal wound to Francis Hamilton. In November 1755 a more violent encounter took place. Patrick Kerwin of County Roscommon fought against a House of Commons deputy sergeant, Edward Brereton, in a sword duel. Both principals suffered injuries, while Kerwin received a fatal wound to the abdomen and died several days

later. The identities of the other five duellists have not been recorded, though we still know something about the resulting injuries.

One of these resulted in grave injuries, one in no injuries. The other duel resulted in both duellists getting arrested before they could face each other at the encounter.

By the 1760s, the reputation of Lucas’s Coffeehouse as a notable duelling ground began to decline gradually. To stop road congestion, the Wide Streets Commission demolished the Coffeehouse in the late 1760s and built the Royal Exchange in its place. However, Lucas’s Coffeehouse would not fade from people’s memory that easily. In 1773 Horace Walpole’s commentary on contemporary drama, it is said that ‘Persian princes love single combat as well as if they had been bred in Lucas’s Coffee House’. Furthermore, Lucas’s was not the

only coffeehouse or inn to serve as a duelling ground. It did, however, remain in history as Georgian Dublin’s most notorious and infamous coffeehouse.

Michael Brown wrote that ‘in many ways, the coffeehouses, taverns, and bookshops of the capital city identify the heart of the Irish Enlightenment’.

The coffeehouses were the sites of ‘intellectual and sensual pleasure, mixing the exotica of international news and strange tastes with local gossip and homely fare’; at the same time, while creating possibility for dissemination of ideas. With the ongoing conflict between Catholics and Protestants, the Irish coffeehouse provided the grounds for the visitors to engage in intellectual, social, and violent conflict.

Vera Ratnikova

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The Response of Feminist Discourse to the Contraceptive Pill

The Pill is often regarded as a incredible advancement for women’s rights and autonomy, Annie Finegan explores contemporary feminist discourse that countered this perception.

The purpose of this article is to challenge conventional stereotypes surrounding the impact of the Pill in the 1960s and 1970s. The pill is widely regarded for its pivotal influence on the lives of women and for its role as a catalyst for the legal recognition of women’s rights. However, contemporary feminist discourse serves to counter this point of view, demonstrating that the Pill did more to reassert the control of men, than it did to empower women.

Female emancipation?

Historians have often told the story of the Pill with optimistic sensibility. They have lauded its ability to emancipate women and break the link in the chain

that had forever tied fell victim to feminist the financial stabili- backlash for much of ty of women to their the 1970s. This was not husband’s earnings. surprising, given that As Elaine Tyler May the Pill was so closely asserts, “the pill made associated with freeit possible for women dom for women. to walk through doors that had once been “men set themselves closed to them”. Indeed, up as experts on it is widely thought that women’s bodies” the Pill gave women the capacity to take control over their fertility, thus An obvious reason for allowing them to build this backlash, which a career of their own historians have not before having children. failed to appreciate, The potential of the Pill was that the Pill was into transform the lives of itially only available to women was, no doubt, married women. Thus, revolutionary. But how the liberation and far did this potential freedom it embedded transcend into reality? made little mark on the lives of single women, Feminist Backlash who, understandably, By 1970, women had were disconcerted by been taking the Pill for this fact. However, the almost a decade and it idea that women’s exwas clear that it had perience with the Pill not lived up to expec- served as a catalyst for tations. Hence, the Pill feminist backlash has

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often been disregarded. For the first time in history, millions of people were taking a powerful drug with no understanding of about the side effects and risks involved. Concerns for the safety and wellbeing of women was, therefore, central to feminists’ campaign in this period.

“What is in this Pill?”

The Pill, once lauded as a symbol of freedom and choice, faced opposition from a new generation of women who were disillusioned by its implications on their health. Against a background of outrage and anger towards the Contraceptive Pill, women began to organize themselves in support

of safe birth control and education for its consumers. Indeed, at the 1969 Women’s Liberation Conference in Boston, the movement Our Bodies, Our Selves (OBOS) was formed.

Central to their campaign was the question “What is this pill?”

This stemmed from the experience of Nancy Hawley, who was instrumental in sourcing the OBOS movement.

After her doctor had recommended she use the Pill for birth control, she asked him “What is in this Pill?”, to which he replied “don’t you worry your pretty little head!,” giving her a condescending pat as he spoke. To Nancy, and other first generation consumers, this was an

indicator of the patriarchal control embedded in the Pill.

The Pill had been glorified as a watershed innovation with the potential to transform the lives of women forever. In reality, it added another barrier which women had to overcome in order to become equal in this patriarchal society.

Male doctors dictated who took the pill, what was in the pill, and how much of the pill to take.

In other words, men set themselves up as experts on women’s bodies. Hence, the OSBO motto “women are the best experts on ourselves” was born.

OSBO aimed to educate

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women about themselves and reinforce ownership of their bodies. In 1970 the women behind the campaign collated their experience to produce a free pamphlet, Women and their Bodies, which covered topics ranging from female anatomy, to sex, to childbirth, to contraception. The pamphlet was designed to raise the consciousness of women and encourage autonomy of their bodies, as well as provide information on the risks and contradictions of the Contraceptive Pill.

“What right did they have?”

The 1970s also saw the emergence of the National Women’s Health Network, formed by Barbara Seaman and .

Akin to the OSBO movement, the initiative of these women was a response to concerns about the safety of the Pill, in particular the FDA’s callous approval of the Pill and lax regulation surrounding

the use of synthetic estrogens. They believed that the pill was indiscriminately prescribed to women far too often, and without any consideration for their health and well-being.

As Seaman put, “what right did they have to give normal healthy women a very powerful medication to take year in and year out, that in one degree or anoth-

er would kill a few of them and maim more than a few of them?”

Seaman’s book, The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill, illuminated groundbreaking evidence that major drug companies had thus far painted a rose-tinted picture of the Pill and that therefore, women were not being appropriately informed

Image: Our Bodies Ourselves

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in their contraceptive choices. Side effects that had been dismissed by doctors as “all in their heads”, such as depression, loss of sex drive, and infertility, were confirmed by Seaman. Worse were her findings that major manufacturers of oral contraceptives had received numerous reports of thrombosis and embolism, yet continued to promote consumption of the Pill through drug company propaganda.

“The pill did not immediately reap freedom and liberation for women”

Women were outraged to hear that pharmaceutical companies were exploiting their sexuality and jeopardising their health for the sake of company profits. Seaman’s research thus sparked a nationwide campaign which called for action against the indiscriminate production of

the Pill. For example, the WHN coined slogans such as “Women’s Health, Not Drug Company Wealth” in response to Seaman’s findings. Their efforts represented the voice of women who had long become disillusioned by the Pill and wanted to reassert control over their bodies.

The discourse of female activists succeeded in giving women an informed choice about contraception.

Pill manufacturers were now required to provide a patient information sheet which listed side effects and hormone levels were regulated to ensure the Pill’s safety. The efforts of feminists in the 1970s proved that male leaders of pharmaceutical companies had no right to strip women of their choice. Women were not “passive, narcissistic, and masochistic,” as described by medical literature, but, rather, they were autonomous and capable, and they

deserved the right to know what they were putting in their bodies.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Pill failed to emancipate women in the 1960s and 1970s.

What it did do, however, was spark a feminist revolution, as evidenced by the efforts of the Our Bodies, Our Selves campaign and the National Woman’s Health Network. Thus, the story of the Pill is not as straight-forward as historians have assumed; it did not immediately reap freedom and liberation for women. The pill came with many drawbacks, which feminists needed to address before it could even be considered revolutionary.

Annie Finegan

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A Third “Red Scare”?

Bernie Sanders and the 2020 US Election

In an analysis of the 2020 United States Presidential Election, Stephanie Wilson examines the connection between the historic ‘red scare’ and the perception of Bernie Sanders

The 2020 United States Presidential Election has the potential to be one of the most significant in recent memory. Global shifts to the right and to nationalism have contributed to a loss of faith in leftist politics. The outcome of this election could either further establish that shift as the new global norm, through the re-election of Donald Trump, or mark a swing back to the left with the election of Bernie Sanders.

I believe the shift to the right in America stems from economic fears after the 2008 global financial collapse, and the prioritisation of capitalistic ideals as the primary measure of national success. Donald Trump has exploited these fears to perfection through his eco-

nomic policy, through an emphasis on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and unemployment rates. This focus on capitalistic development disregards social development, which is in decline. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticised the measurement of poverty; while it is officially in decline, she argues real levels would constitute a “national scandal” if updates were made to the federal poverty line.

The number of Americans without health insurance also shows social decline. In 2018, 8.5% (27 million) of Americans were without insurance, and the proportion of adults without health insurance in 2019 stands at 13.7%. Using these units of social develop-

ment, it shows that capitalist measurements of success do not reveal the issues with American capitalism or government, and therefore furthers the demonization of left-wing politicians who seek to make changes.

America may have never been a hot-bed of extreme left or socialist principles, but many free-market Republicans have little faith in the strength of American democracy, giving way to what I argue is a third “Red Scare”. This, in the eyes of Republicans, has come in the shape of Bernie Sanders. From his plans for universal health care, to prioritisation of combating climate change, Sanders has attacked the area Republicans value the most – the

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economy. In this article I will establish the background of the “Red Scare” in America, the right-wing perceptions of Bernie Sanders, and how this has coincided in a third “Red Scare”.

This targets democratic socialists as the new threat to American capitalism, in the place of communism, and in the context of a post-neoliberal nation since the mid-2010s.

The First and Second “Red Scares” The United States has seen two “Red Scares” – a national fear of communism as potentially infiltrating the usual way of political or social life. The first arose from the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which Robert Murray argues planted communism as ‘the epitome of all that was evil’ in the American mind. American prioritisation of capitalism and economic growth as a measure of national success contributed to this fear of com-

munism, as the two economic models opposed each other. The search for communists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation between 1919 and 1943 established the importance of the organisation and reflected institutional fears of communism.

As the context of the Russian Revolution in the First World War brought about the first “Red Scare”, the Cold War after the Second World War brought about the second “Red Scare”, and the practice of McCarthyism. McCarthyism in the 1950s is the act of accusation of treason without substantial evidence, referring to the Republican senator Joseph McCarthy. One of the most well-known examples was the executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1953, who were accused of being Soviet spies and having knowledge of the atomic bomb. Widespread propaganda also established anticommunism as a national

belief in this period. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Hollywood blacklist marked another attempt to quell the communist threat. The blacklist meant the denial of employment to Communists, or communist sympathisers, in the entertainment industry. These examples show the American government and elite’s attempt to hide any rumblings of com-

munism from the American public, and the establishment of anticommunism as a national belief. This long tradition of the “Red Scare” throughout the twentieth century engrained into American minds a deep-rooted fear of communism.

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More broadly, it established America’s tradition of political conservatism and opposition to left-wing politics as a perceived threat to American nationalism and capitalism

Feeling the Bern Bernie Sanders is considered to be the most radical American politician in decades. There are countless examples of online blogs from right-wing Americans

comparing him to destructive or failed socialist leaders, coining the term “Crazy Bernie”, and others even labelling him an “all-out Marxist”. From reading these right-wing opinions, one would believe that Sanders was an

extreme leftist outsider in the Democratic primaries. He was defeated by Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination in 2016, but 2020 tells a different story. He currently stands as the leader in the primaries, with 35 out of 84 declared delegates [as of 24th February 2020].

Sanders even surpasses Joe Biden, the former Vice President, who was once billed as a shoo-in to be the 46th President of the United States. Looking at the poll average from Real Clear Politics, Sanders stands currently at 29.3%, with Biden in second at 17.2%, a complete turnaround compared to one year ago (Sanders at 18%, Biden at 29.3%).

Sanders’ described himself as a “democratic socialist” and aligns himself with the socialist governments of Scandinavia. His plans for a New Green Deal and universal health care certainly fit with

this European model of government and would mark a drastic shift from Trump’s “Make America Great Again” brand of capitalist government. In comparison to the presidency of Barack Obama, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ObamaCare”), Sanders can be seen as simply finishing off what was already started. On the topic of the New Green Deal, it would idealistically be a nonpartisan issue to combat climate change. In the age of Trump and climate change denial, though, tackling climate change does become a highly politicised stance.

However, the threats these key policies pose to the capitalist elite in America has rendered Sanders a threat, too.

Despite what rightwing pundits and those fearing Sanders’ radical policies might say, America is certainly “Feeling the Bern”. This popular support for Sanders does not com-

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Image: https://schoolworkhelper.net/

pletely silence the critics, though, and it is important to assess these legitimate attacks and understand them to be as serious as they are.

A Third “Red Scare”?

Russia, Sanders, and Antisemitism.

In 2016, Russian election hacking showed the continued Cold War rivalry between Russia and America, and the continued American fear of Eastern infiltration. Recent American hostilities with China and North Korea have also shown that the communist fear is still rife within American popular opinion. Malcolm Harris argued in 2016 that American’s

have ‘forgotten’ their anti-Communist past, and 51% of Americans do not support capitalism. However, the anti-Communist sentiment in America is more hidden today, and support for capitalism does not necessarily matter when it is so deeply engrained into the American political system and way of life. The fear of Bernie Sanders’ socialist principles and left-wing policies marks the new twenty-first century wave of a “Red Scare”.

Twitter has proven as a breeding ground for such attacks. Sanders, a man of Jewish descent, is depicted as an

antisemitic caricature in political cartoons, and this aspect of his identity is used as a point of attack for his critics. Sanders himself has also been accused of antisemitism. These critiques, together with attacks on Sanders as a ‘crazed’ socialist or Marxist, form the new “Red Scare” in America – a fear of threat to American capitalism and economic development through a shift to left-wing economic policies. Rightwing attacks on Bernie Sanders are great in number, and at the beginning of the presidential election campaign, they show no sign of stopping. As the election unfolds, we will see how these attacks continue, and whether this new “Red Scare” as a threat to the “great” American economy will be successful, or if Sanders will prevail above the noise to bring economic reform to the United States.

Stephanie Wilson

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An Introduction to the History of Emotions

Liam Greenacre offers us a brief introduction to the history of emotions and its key historiography

Although often overlooked, the history of emotions is an increasingly prominent scholarly field. Emotions are fundamental to the human experience, and are an exciting subject for the historian to truly understand the experiences of the subjects of research.

Methodologies Historians, Peter and Carol Stearns, argue that the concept of emotionology is the most helpful methodology for understanding human emotions.

Emotionology is the way groups think about emotions and their expressions, differing from an individual’s experience of an emotion. According to the Stearns, historians have wrongly focused on emotional standards. The main advantage with the Stearn’s

approach is that it makes a distinction between ideal and reality, allowing us to assess when a society’s expectations are influencing individual emotions.

One can access an emotionology through literature like handbooks or advisory documents, whereas the degree to which emotional standards affect real emotions can be gained through reading diaries and personal letters. However, it can often be hard to do the latter, as an emotionology may be influencing how the author reacts,

and what they write down. The division between emotionology and emotion is perhaps not always easy to make.

While Stearns’ ideas are useful for understanding modern history, it is questionable whether this is the same for the medieval period. Letters and diaries are less abundant during the medieval period and the collections that do exist were often selective or edited.

Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of emotional

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communities is better for understanding the medieval period. An emotional community is just like any other social community, but is defined by its emotional norms and practices. Individuals can be members of multiple communities which often surrounded groups dominating textual production. For example, Rosenwein identified three successive communities in Merovingian Gaul. The main benefit of Rosenwein’s approach is that it challenges the idea that the medieval period was less rational and more emotional than modernity.

William Reddy introduces a number of concepts that can be used to understand emotions. Emotives, not emotions, are utterances which alter the state of an emotion itself, by the effect vocalisation can have like reaffirming or denying a particular state. The main advantage of Reddy’s

concept of emotives is that it makes a bridge between the experience of an emotion and the language used to describe it. “Emotions are the real-world-anchor of signs”, emotives confirming the existence of something outside of language.

The dominant form of emotional expression, known as an emotional regime, is then transformed by power dynamics and power of emotives in language already.

“Rosenwein’s approach challenges the idea that the medieval period was less rational and more emotional than modernity”

Emotions, Power and Words An additional debate surrounds whether emotions change over time. It has been questioned whether they are biological constants or social constructions and whether emotions

alter over time or if it is merely that their names change. A key emotion for understanding this debate is acedia, seen throughout early history texts as an early description for the clinically depressed. Acedia is highly problematic as authors, even within a short time frame, describe it very differently. Monastic writers claimed its symptoms included sleepiness, sickness, weakness in the knees, a lack of attention to prayer and overall dissatisfaction with monastic life or even the exact opposite, too much dedication to asceticism. It is unclear whether these authors are all writing about the same emotion. Modern scholars have had to come up with several explanations for acedia. This includes linking it to depression, or Emile Durkheim’s concept of Anomie, which describes a disjuncture between a society’s expectations and an individual’s ability to reach

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them. Acedia could therefore represent a modern emotional state or alternatively its variety could be explained by temporal change.

However, emotions are also heavily connected with the exercise of power. They have had a particularly prominent role in gender relations. For example, after World War I, the Edwardian idea of ‘stoic’ manliness broke down due to the tough experience of warfare. Post-war memoirs and novels, such as Herbert’s The Secret Battle (1919), emphasised the complexity and diversity of emotional reactions. In Ancient Greece, male and female emotions differed based on the gap between different genders. Gender relations were in flux in the mid-seventh century BCE, but by 580 BCE, an ideology of controlled rationality had emerged.

Emotions can and have been mobilised politically. Nicole Eustace comments on how emotions were used during the American Revolution; ‘The spirit of liberty arose

Image: Zyance | Wikimedia Commons

from the careful blend of genteel feeling and popular passion. Consisting of a heady blend of civic love, mighty anger, and communal sympathy and public grief’. This was to mediate between the apparent ‘insensibility imputed to the enslaved and the excessive spirit ascribed to Indians and the enslaved and the excessive spirit ascribed to Indians and while also avoiding the

ineffectual effeminacy attributed to the English’. As Liu has argued, the mobilisation of emotions was also apparent under Maoism in China and was based around three themes: victimisation, redemption and emancipation.

Each theme respectively produced indignation in struggle campaigns, guilt in thought reform campaigns and final euphoria for social reform. Emotions during the American Revolution and in Maoist China were used and assigned in a diverse variety of ways.

This article has looked at a number of key issues in the history of emotions. It has hoped to serve as an effective introduction to these, while also raising some questions that still need to be answered.

The history of emotions is a rapidly developing field and there is still plenty of new ground to be explored.

Liam Greenacre

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Representation and Restriction in the House of Lords

Out of the 92 hereditary peers currently sitting in the House of Lords, none are women. This underrepresentation relates to the patriarchal history of the upper house and historical prejudices against the political woman. The House of Lords is a pivotal institution of the British political system but has received far less academic attention than the Commons. The bicameral parliament we recognize today originated in the 14th century when the two distinct houses emerged, participating in the fundamental moments of British history.

The underrepresentation of women within the House of Lords is tied up with its structure and traditions.

Gender representation has never been formally addressed within the Lords. The 1958

Life Peerages Act intended to limit the inheritance of peerages down family lines, the fact that Stella Isaacs became the first female peer was only a side note. One route to attaining a peerage is by recommendation from your party leader, and those recommended are typically the most high-ranking and prestigious politicians in the respective parties. Therefore, the representation of women in the Lords is “a gradual process and contingent upon feminisation within the Commons and political parties more generally.” Furthermore, the representation of women in the Commons is hampered by the “motherhood trap,” as the parliamentary structure restricts women leaving their careers to raise children but also demonises mothers who aren’t

active in their child’s life - which does not inhibit male MP’s. Although, recent Labour and Lib-Dem governments have capitalised the lack of public election to the Lords by deliberately appointing women to the Lords and feminising the upper house.

The future substantive female representation in the Lords partly depends on the past female representation in the Commons.

There will be no radical change within the gender representation of the Lords as it depends on the gradual increase of female representation in all of British politics.

Mary Taylor Lewis

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Life after Death: The Beauty of Historical Facial Reconstruction

How new facial reconstructions offer us a new understanding of legendary historical figures, through the specific analysis of Caesar and Augustus.

Legendary figures, heroes, noble warriors or magnanimous leaders – individuals who possessed something about them, some innate quality, that makes them stand out in the unending torment of fate. Not just simply the fate of death, but the fate of being forgotten.

That is why I find the art of historical facial reconstruction so fascinating. In this kind of history, there is always an argument for just how historical the practice of facial reconstruction is. Physical evidence of an individual’s look is hard to come by. The use of death masks, bones, likeness records such as coins or paintings, written accounts and statues – each of these points of evidence can

lead historians and artists alike to piece together what certain individuals may have looked like. When we can see the figure before us, it births them to life like nothing else.

In the words of Sarah P. Young, “There is an art in deciphering which

“I would describe it as an art like no other, which evokes such a familiar and human resonance with the historical ”

elements of flattering portraits of Elizabeth I are accurate... but there is also an art in imagining what a fashionable hairstyle may have been for a young woman in the European Bronze Age.” I would describe it as an art like no other, which evokes such a familiar

and human resonance with the historical, it burdens us to reflect on our own place in the spectrum of time – and whether or not we will ever be recreated by a plastic head.

A construction of Julius Caesar, revealed by the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, shows the man in shrewd detail unlike ever seen before. Reconstructed in immaculate detail, this legendary historical figure can almost be seen living among us when you picture this face at the events attributed to their lives.

Due to a difficult birth, it’s likely that Caesar’s skull had an odd shape and a bulge on one side. With facial features that are almost

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overshadowed by his wide head, the weedy and physically unimposing individual sits at a stark contrast with a reflective and deeply intelligent gaze.

The digital historian, Historia Civilis, makes the claim that Caesar was “egomaniacal”, consistently displaying an arrogant and violent disregard for the institutions of his society, culminating in his aggrandising move to make himself King, but emblematic of a man that was a characteristic demagogue. Caesar’s legacy is founded by his position as a populist and man of the people. Despite being a member of the ruling class of Roman society, he frequently fought for the betterment of the Roman citizenry against an increasingly corrupt elite through violence and propaganda. Further, he is famous for astonishing military victories – where he found a way to win, even in dire cir-

cumstances. Nevertheless, Caesar displayed a brutality that, although not unique for the time he lived in, showed a severe lack of empathy and overbearing xenophobia in his military campaigns in Gaul. His political career was defined by his victory in a civil war that, although he instigated, had been an inevitability in the

crumbling institutions of the Republic. After this civil war, Caesar’s arrogant behaviour led to his brutal assassination at the feet of a statue earlier constructed in the honour of his civil war rival, Pompey.

It is clear that Caesar was an incredibly charming individual: displaying political

shrewdness, hilarious wit and hypnotizing oration throughout his life despite his debilitating issues with epilepsy. Famously, when he was a young man, he was taken hostage by a band of pirates in the Mediterranean. While awaiting the payment from his family for his safe return, Caesar charmed the pirates so affectionately that they incorporated him into their social circle, played games and drank with him as if he were a fellow pirate instead of keeping him in the slave-like conditions that most prisoners endured.

Then, when Caesar was freed, months later he returned with a band of armed men to arrest and hang the pirates.

Despite his political shrewdness and talent for oration, it is said that the civil war embittered Caesar dramatically in his later years.

He became crasser, began to drink far more and submitted to a

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deep and power-hungry demon that lived within him. At his core, the assessment of Caesar as an egomaniacal man isn’t unwarranted.

When his power became truly unchecked, he did everything he ever wanted to do. He began to wear ceremonial robes meant for deeply religious festivals consistently in public and frequently aggrandised his own power by endless honorific titles. Arrogance

is its own vice, after all.

On the day of his assassination, Caesar reportedly suffered from an epileptic fit during the night and told a Senator (and conspirator in the plot to assassinate him) that he felt too unwell to attend

the Senate meeting.

However, this conspirator managed to lure Caesar away by telling him that the Senate was debating the idea of allowing Caesar to call himself King when outside of the province of Italy.

Other reconstruction projects, such as the Cesares de Roma project by Spanish artist Salva Ruano, base Caesar more heavily on the famous busts that are used to depict Caesar’s likeness. These interpretations heavily suggest a masculine, soldierly demeanour that is complemented by a muscular neck, chiselled jawline and attractive charm despite his balding head. When we look at Caesar’s life, we can see why an artist may take inspiration from the more masculine depictions of Caesar. After all, his life was not only eventful, but fundamentally shaped the course of human history.

Octavian Similarly, the Cesares de Roma project has reconstructed the man considered to be the first Roman Emperor, Octavian, later known as Augustus.

In his commentary on the work, artist Salva Ruano states that he sees Octavian as a ruthless character who displayed a nearly nonchalant attitude towards acts of betrayal, murder or violence if they would achieve his ambitions. Shrewd, calculating, intelligent; at only the age of 19, Octavian was leading thousands of men at the head of an army.

Octavian, Caesar’s grandnephew, succeeded a vicious power struggle to eventually

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absorb the power vacuum left after his great uncle’s assassination.

Through Octavian, who gave himself the name Augustus, the Roman Republic began its transition towards Imperial court control, ushering in a period of peace known as the Pax Romana.

Historians consider Augustus to have been an astute learner, sexually chaste as a young man (though hypocritically adulterous in his later life as he pursued policies of punishing sexual perversion) and raised mostly by family members due to his father’s early death.

According to some sources, Octavian wore shoes with built-up soles to make himself seem taller, suggesting that although he was not reportedly small, he saw himself as such.

That, or he wanted to tower over others.

Graceful and well-proportioned, his blonde hair and blue eyes

were a strong contrast to the traditional blackhaired Mediterranean look that most Romans held. The choice to focus on Augustus as a young man is reflective of the relative lack of busts or physical material as he grew older.

This work on Augustus remains one of the only serious endeavours of facial reconstruction for the man.

When we look at these facial reconstructions and think of the men that once lived and breathed among the same spaces we do now, we cannot help but create an image in our heads of what

they would have been like. The artist of these works, Salva Ruano, even goes so far as to imagine a conversation with Augustus, conjuring thoughts on some of the things a character such as he would say. In a wider sense, these reconstructions force us to humanise the past in a way we perhaps often do not – where once we would see states, ideas and grand movements, they instead become little more than the passions and investments of fallible, complex souls.

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Introducing

Editorial Board 2020 - 2021 Co Editors-in-Chief Holly Palmer Fin Bosworth Medieval Editor Ellie Dudgeon

Early Modern Editor Charlotte Small Modern Editor Lucy Wilde

General Editor Mary Taylor Lewis

How to Get Involved

We’d love for you to write for us, we always welcome content for our Medieval, Early Modern or Modern sections or you can even write us a review!

You can become a member of TYH on the YUSU website. If you have an idea for an article you should email us (yorkhistorian@yusu.org) outlining your idea. We encourage articles that span across periods and topics or which seem unconventional! No experience is required.

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